








: 





V » ' • « , > 



(y * 

. v- " " r\\ A v » „ 'O- ' * * 

V* r'J ^ ' 0 /■ v* 

* rft> ^ ^ 1- 5 » V ^ 

V ** -N « '$ ,- A) 

, . -' • ■ ^ y ; ° z *•>-< 

P AdMfl ■':('• . ^ 


à * 


s \^ *<7Ys'\* 





, __. ^ r # <f* 
VJ * * s S ^A G 



r - ^ a\- * 

° ^ <S‘ A V 

z O V « 


c5> -A, a „ 

- & %■ \% 


Y * 



✓ -W^ ^ ^ 

„ <+***•'' a g ^ 

^ fO’ * Y * °/ ^ 

^ 0 r tf S, * <&> 


y / , 


i > it 


<$> A. 

,* c$> *#. %«« 

\<y , -v 


" ^ -<r y 

XV a ^ » 0 „ V, 



o 

* K 

^ /Æ^ v - ■'• 

21 > » 2: 


3r*K> 



cS ^ 

* & % 


^ ** o cS *«^> 

; V'*-' / 

^ ^ ' 6? 3 %, ^ 

°, %.d< -T^jHL#2° r$ « A\W/n> o ^ 


Y * 0 *. v< 



r ° "%> ^ 




■V ■■ . 

sS A G *'t 

rO * ^ * « /• 

+ & ft V 


° 


!? 



s- # 

4 V - „ 

V v>v:\% c v ^ 

■<> ^ * iSJ^iC^ °_ "%> ~ 



5 *%* 1 IX Pf* “ ,<A - Wf 1- O cS> A. ' V 

^ o¥ », %W*r * „v r. 

<, "- „s' V # ' . ^Tfs" # • . %, 

'* ^ ‘ <^+'k‘»'-% 

0^ * J*^ ^ ^ C$ * & ® ^ "o ^ 


1 * 0 



71 


^ o 
























\ « o J, 


c£> -» l|||é^ « cS ^ 

^ vJW?,* c # ^ V, 

V ^ /y / c s -\V> ^ X/ V ^ 

"O- y * * s ^ * 0 „ "O * 

rvj '}-• ''/' ■%>> A) ÿ- Z' 

0 ^ V. ^ . 0 *• r ^ A % 

; ^ 



V 

r ^ # " 
° % 4* 




t 


r S v^> ^ ^ MjSy O c3 - 1 

# ^ 'WPs^ ^ \ 

^ *<»'' J> ... < *< 





ù <t 



' <$'' ^'’TÜT'' ,/ o Q ^TTfT-' a^' 

V * * * o a ^ V s- v *°a C ^ V *- * 

A^ .WA % ^ .WA ^ 

°- 'V • _ A\IM ° x>„ ^Mzh ® <£> -sr 



cS ^ ■• j 

,1? ^ ", ' 


o cS -* 

-s r ^> <p 'r°m^£ r y 

' ” 0 / < A * * r0‘ » * * » * '<f * " rO- s- v * 0 f ^ 





V’’ «. Y * Of "% 


V [f 

-\^ V 

V * Y * 0 / V * v * 

.. V % * 

« '^.V'^-'vV/ /; . <l* V « 




t * o p N< 



* ^° 

































0 


















































» 
























■ 


































































































ESSAY 


ON 


THE GENERATIVE PRINCIPLE 


OF 


POLITICAL CONSTITUTIONS. 


CHJ3K 


TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH 

M. LE COMTE JOSEPH ,DE MAISTRE, 

TV— 7 

AUTHOR OF EVENINGS AT ST. PETERSBURG, &C. 


FILII HOM1NUM USQUEQUO GRAVI CORDE ? UT QUID DILIGITIS 
VANITATEM, ET QUÆRITIS MENDACIUM. Ps. ÎV. 3. 



BOSTON: 

LITTLE AND BROWN. 


MDCCCXLVII. 




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1847, by 
Charles C. Little and James Brown, 

In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of 
Massachusetts. 


» * 




BOSTON- 

PRINTED BY ALFRED MUDGE, 
No. 21 School Street. 


NOTICE BY THE TRANSLATOR. 


It has been frequently noticed as a uniform 
tendency of the sciences of the last period, to 
limit or exclude the Divine agency, in the several 
departments to which they relate. This tendency 
has been no less obvious in political, than in 
physical science. In the political theories of the 
last century, the origin of Civil Institutions has 
been uniformly traced to some social compact, or 
some other act, more or less deliberate, of merely 
human arrangement, to the exclusion of the Divine 
agency. It is this error, so repugnant to the 
religious spirit, though sanctioned by the highest 
names in modern political science, so fraught with 
pernicious consequences, though seemingly a 



IV 


harmless speculation, which it is the object of 
this Essay to expose. The great name of the 
Author is a sufficient pledge of the ability of the 
work. The extent and variety of learning display¬ 
ed in it, the depth of its political reflections, 
the light cast by it upon very many associated 
topics of the greatest importance, the eloquence 
to which it rises in occasional passages, and the 
tone of moral earnestness by which the whole is 
pervaded, cannot fail to be acknowledged, even 
by those who may not be convinced by its argu¬ 
ments. 

In transferring to our language', a work of such 
a nature, the Translator has felt bound to do what 
he could to represent the exact meaning of the 
Author with the utmost fidelity, even when it 
might be necessary, in so doing, to sacrifice 
something of beauty or harmony of style. He has 
added a few notes, always included in brackets, 


V 


designed to explain and illustrate such historical 
allusions, and other matters of the text, as might 
• not, in themselves, be sufficiently intelligible. 

The work is submitted to the candour of the 
thoughtful reader, in the hope that it may lead to 
a more just recognition of the Hand of God in 
the History of the World. 

Boston, June 12, 1847. 




. 

■ 



PREFACE. 


Political Science, which is, perhaps, the most 
thorny of all sciences, by reason of the difficulty 
perpetually arising, of discerning what is stable or 
changeable in its elements, presents a very strange 
phenomenon, well calculated to make every wise 
man, called to the administration of states, to 
tremble ; it is this, that whatever good sense 
perceives, at first view, in this science, as an 
evident truth, is almost always found, when ex¬ 
perience has spoken, not only false, but pernicious. 

To begin at the foundation. If we had never 
heard governments spoken of, and men were 
called upon to deliberate, for example, on hered¬ 
itary or elective monarchy, we should justly 
regard one who should decide for the former, 
as a madman : the arguments against it appear 



viiî 

so naturally to reason, that it is useless to repeat 
them. History, however, which is experimental 
politics, demonstrates, that an hereditary monarchy 
is the government which is the most stable, the 
happiest, and most natural to man ; and an elec¬ 
tive monarchy, on the contrary, is the worst form 
of government known. 

With respect to population, commerce, pro¬ 
hibitive laws, and a thousand other important 
subjects, the most plausible theory is almost 
always found to be contradicted and annulled by 
experience. Let us cite a few examples. 

What method must be adopted to render a state 
powerful ? “ It is necessary, first of all, to favour 

population by every possible means.” On the 
contrary, every law, tending directly to favour 
population, without regard to other considerations, 
is bad. It is even necessary, to endeavour to estab¬ 
lish in the state a certain moral power, tending to 
diminish the number of marriages, and to render 
them less hasty. The proportion of births over 
deaths, as ascertained by tables, only proves, or¬ 
dinarily, the number of the wretched. Etc., etc. 


IX 


French economists had sketched the demonstra¬ 
tion of these truths : the excellent work of 
Malthus has completed it. 

How shall scarcity and famine be prevented ? 
“ Nothing is more simple. It is necessary to 
prohibit the exportation of grains.” On the con¬ 
trary, a premium must be allowed to those who 
export them. The example and authority of 
England have constrained us to swallow this para¬ 
dox. 

How shall exchange be maintained in favour of 
a particular country ? “It is unquestionably 
necessary to prevent the specie from going out 
of it, and consequently to see to it, by severe 
prohibitory laws, that the state buys no more than 
it sells.” On the contrary, these means have 
never been employed without lowering the ex¬ 
change, or, what amounts to the same thing, 
without augmenting the indebtedness of the 
nation ; and never can the opposite course be 
taken without raising it, that is to say, without 
making it evident that the credit of the nation 

over its neighbours is increased. Etc., etc. 

2 


X 


But the observation we are now considering 
recurs most frequently in that which is most 
substantial and fundamental in politics ; I mean 
in the very constitution of empires. It is said 
that the German philosophers have invented the 
word Metapolitics to be to Politics, what Meta¬ 
physics is to Physics. This new term appears to 
be very happily invented to express the Meta¬ 
physics of Politics, for there is such a thing ; and 
this science deserves the profound attention of 
observers. 

An anonymous writer who has been much oc¬ 
cupied with speculations of this nature, and who 
has endeavored to fathom the hidden foundations 
of the social edifice, believed himself to be in the 
right when, nearly twenty years ago, he advanced, 
as so many incontestable axioms, the following 
propositions, diametrically opposed to the theories 
of that time.* 

* [The work of our author from which these propositions 
are taken, contains a fuller and more comprehensive state¬ 
ment of his views ; and the translator has thought it worth 
while to add so much as would serve to elucidate, more 
distinctly, the author’s meaning. Such additions will be 
included in brackets.—T rans.] 


XI 


1. No constitution results from deliberation ; 
the rights of the people are never written, or 
never except as simple declarations of pre-existing 
rights not written, of which nothing more can be 
said, than that they exist because they exist.* 

2. Human action in such cases is so far 
circumscribed, that the men who act are only 
circumstances. [God not having judged it proper 
to employ in this matter supernatural means, 
at least circumscribes human action to such a 
degree, that circumstances do all. It is even 
very common that in pursuing a certain end they 
obtain another, as appears in the English consti¬ 
tution.] 

3. The rights of the people , properly so called, 
proceed almost always from the concessions of 
sovereigns, and then it is possible to trace them 
historically ; but the rights of the sovereign 
and of the aristocracy, [at least the essential, 

* lit would be very foolish to ask , who gave liberty to the 
cities of Sparta , of Rome, etc. Those republics never 
received their charters from, man. God and nature gave 
them, to them. Sidney’s Disc, on Government, vol. I, §. 2. 
The author is not suspicious. 


Xll 


constitutive and radical rights, if it is permissi¬ 
ble to express one’s self thus,] have neither date 
nor known authors. 

4. These concessions themselves have always 
been preceded by a state of thing's which ren¬ 
dered them necessary, and which did not depend 
upon the sovereign. 

5. Although written laws are only the declar¬ 
ations of pre-existing rights, yet it does not follow 
that all these rights can be written. [There is 
always in every constitution, something which 
cannot be written,* and which must be left 
in a dark and venerable cloud, under pain of 
overturning the state ] 

6. The more is written, the weaker the con- 

* [The judicious Hume has often made this remark. I 
will cite only the following passage. It is this circumstance 
in the English constitution , (the right of remonstrance) 
which it is most difficult , or rather altogether impossible , to 
regulate by laws ; it must be governed by certain delicate 
ideas of propriety and decency , rather than by any exact 
rule or prescription. Hume’s Hist, of England, Chas. I, 
chap, iv, vol. vi, page 269 : note in Dove’s Edit. London, 
1822. Thomas Paine is of another opinion, as is well 
known. He pretends that a constitution does not exist 
unless one can put it into his pocket.] 


Xlll 


stitution. [The reason is obvious. Laws are 
only declarations of rights, and rights are only 
declared when they are attacked ; so that the 
multiplicity of written constitutional laws, only 
evinces the number of shocks and the danger 
of destruction. The most vigorous and flourish¬ 
ing institution of profane antiquity was that of 
Lacedaemon, where nothing was written.] 

7. No nation can give liberty to itself, if it has 
it not.* [When a nation begins to reflect upon 
itself, its laws are already made.] Human influ¬ 
ence does not extend beyond the development of 
existing rights [but which were unacknowledged 
or disputed. If the imprudent overleap these limits 
by rash reforms, the nation loses what it had, 
without attaining wnat it wishes. Hence results 
the necessity of innovating only very rarely, and 
always with moderation and trembling.] 

* Machiavel is appealed to here in evidence. Unpopolo 
uso a vivere sotto un principe , sc per qualche accidente diven- 
ta libero , con difficulté mantiene la liberté. [If a people 
accustomed to live under the dominion of a prince, should 
by any accident become free, they will find it a very difficult 
matter to maintain their liberty.] Disc. sopr. Tito-Livio, lib. 
I, cap. xvi. 


XIV 


8. Lawgivers, strictly speaking, are extraor¬ 
dinary men, belonging perhaps only to the an¬ 
cient world and to the youth of nations. [When 
Providence has decreed the more rapid formation 
of a political constitution, there appears a man 
clothed with an indefinable power; he speaks, and 
he makes himself to be obeyed. These lawgivers 
par excellence possess one distinctive character¬ 
istic : they are kings, or eminently noble ; in 
this point, there is and can be no exception. It 
was on this account that the institution of Solon, 
the most frail of antiquity, failed.* The flourish¬ 
ing days of Athens, which did not continue long,’j* 
were all the while interrupted by conquests and 

* [Plutarch has clearly seen this truth. Solon, says he, 
could not long maintain a city in union and concord , being 
only a commoner and of moderate estate. See his life of 
Solon.] 

t [ Hœc extrema fuit œtas imper atorum Æhceniensium, 
Iphicratis, Chabrice, Timothei : neque post illorum obitum 
quisquam dux in ilia urbe fuit dignus memoriâ. Corn 
Nepos. Vit. Timoth., cap. iv. From the battle of Mara¬ 
thon to that of Leucadia, gained by Timotheus, there 
elapsed 114 years. It is the diapason of the glory of 
Athens.] 


XV 


tyrannies ; and 'Solon even saw the Pisistrat- 
idæ. # ] 

*[I have spoken of a principal characteristic of true law¬ 
givers ; there is anotl e* which is very remarkable, and on 
which it would be easy to make a volume. It is, that they 
are never what we call taoms ; they do not write; they act 
by instinct and by impulse, more than by reasoning ; and 
they have no other instrument to act with, than a certain 
moral force which bends the wills, as the wind bends the 
the field of grain. 

In showing that this observation is only the corollary of 
a general truth of the highest importance, I could say in¬ 
teresting things; but I fear losing myself: I love better to 
suppress the intermediate steps, and hasten to results. 

There is between theoretical politics and constitutive 
legislation, the same difference which exists between the 
theory of poetry and poetry. The illustrious Montesquieu 
is to Lycurgus, in the general scale of minds, what Bat¬ 
teux is to Homer or Racine. 

More than that. ; these two talents positively exclude 
each other, as we have seen by the example of Locke, who 
blundered awkwardly when he took it into his head to try 
to give laws to the Americans. 

I have seen a great lover of the republic seriously lament¬ 
ing that Frenchmen had not discovered in the works of 
H urne, the piece entitled, Plan of a perfect Republic .— 
O coccus hominum mentes ! If you see an ordinary man who 
may have good sense, but who may have never given, in 
any way, any outward sign of superiority, you cannot for 
all this be assured that he could not be a lawgiver. There 
is no reason for saying yes or no ; but if the question be of 


XVI 


9. These lawgivers even, notwithstanding their 
wonderful power, have only collected the pre¬ 
existing elements, [elements which existed in the 
customs and character of the people,] and have 
always acted in the name of the Divinity. 

10. Liberty, in a sense, is the gift of kings ; 
for all nations were constituted free by kings.* 
[This is the general rule, and the exceptions that 
might be indicated, would enter into the rule, if 
they were discussed.f] 

Bacon, of Locke, of Montesquieu, etc., say no, without 
hesitation ; for the talent that he has, proves that he has 
not the other.] 

* This ought to be deeply considered in modern monarch¬ 
ies. As all legitimate and sacred immunities of this kind 
proceed rightfully from the sovereign, every thing that is 
extorted by force is smitten with anathema. To write a 
law, Demosthenes has very well said, is nothing; to 
make it to be willed is every thing. (Olynth. III.) 
But if this is true of the sovereign in respect of the people, 
what shall we say of a nation, that is to say, to employ the 
mildest term, of a club of heated theorists, who would 
propose a constilution to a legitimate sovereign, as we 
propose a capitulation to a besieged general ? That would 
be indecent, absurd and, more than all, futile. 

t [Neque ambigitur quin Brutus idem , qui tantum glories, 
superbo exacto rege, meruit, pessimo publico id facturus 
fuerit, si libertatis immatures cupidinè priorum regum alicui 


xvii 


11. There never has existed a free nation 
which had not, in its natural constitution, germs of 
liberty as old as itself; and no nation has ever 
successfully attempted to develope, by its funda¬ 
mental written laws, other rights than those which 
existed in its natural constitution. 

12. No assembly of men can give existence to 
a nation. An attempt of this kind ought even to 
be ranked among the most memorable acts of folly * 
[exceeding in folly what all the Bedlams of the 
world might produce most absurd and extrava¬ 
gant.] 

regnum extorsisset, etc. Tit.-Liv. II, i. The entire passage 
is well worthy of being contemplated.] 

* Machiavel is again cited here. E debbesi pigliare 
questo per una regola generale, che non mai,o di rado, 
occorre che alcuna repubblica o regno sia da principio 
ordinato bene, o al tutto di nuovo luori degli ordini 
vecchi riformato, se non è ordinato da uno ; anzi è ne- 
cessario che uno solo sia quello che dia il modo , e dalla 
cui mente dipenda qualunque simile ordinazione. Disc, 
sopr. Tit. Liv., lib. I, cap. ix. [For it must be laid down 
as a general rule, that it very seldom or never happens, 
that any government is either well founded at first, or 
thoroughly reformed afterwards, except the plan be laid 
and conducted by one man only , who has the sole power of 
giving all orders and making all laws that are necessary for 
its establishment.— Trans.] 


XY111 


It does not appear that, since the year 1796, the 
date of the first edition of the work we quote,* 
there has anything passed in the world to induce 
the author to abandon his theory. We believe on 
the contrary, that it may be useful at this 
moment to develope the theory fully, and to 
trace it to its ultimate results; the most important 
of which is, doubtless, the one that is found 
announced in these terms, in the tenth chapter 
of the same work, viz. : 

“ Man cannot create a sovereign. At the ut¬ 
most, he maybe the instrument in dethroning the 
sovereign, and delivering his kingdom to another 
sovereign already royal...[and even the manner 
in which human power is employed in these 
circumstances, is well fitted to humble it. It is 
here especially that we may address to man these 
words of J. J. Rousseau ; montre-moi ta puissance 
je te montrerai ta faiblesse]... Moreover there never 
has existed a royal family to whom a plebeian origin 
could be assigned. If such a phenomenon should 
appear , it ivould create an era in the world .”f 

* Considerations sur la France, chap. vi. 

t Ibid, chap, x, §. iii. 


XIX 


With respect to this proposition we may reflect, 
that the divine judgment has just now sanctioned it 
in a manner sufficiently solemn. But who knows 
whether the ignorant levity of our age will not 
seriously say, if he had ivilled it, he ivould still be 
in his place ! just as is now repeated after two 
centuries ; if Richard Cromwell had possessed the 
genius of his father, he would have fixed the pro¬ 
tectorate in his family ; which is precisely the 
same as to say, if this family had not ceased to 
reign, it woidd reign still. 

It is written, By me kings reign.* This is 
not a phrase of the church, a metaphor of the 
preacher ; it is a literal truth, simple and palp¬ 
able. It is a law of the political world. God 
makes kings in the literal sense. He prepares 
royal races ; maturing them under a cloud which 
conceals their origin. They appear at length 
crowned with glory and honour ; they take their 
places ; and this is the most certain sign of their 
legitimacy. 

* Per me Reges regnant. Prov. viii. 15 


XX 


The truth is, that they arise as it were of them¬ 
selves, without violence on the one part, and without 
marked deliberation on the other : it is a species 
of magnificent tranquillity, not easy to express. 
Legitimate usurpation would seem to me to be the 
most appropriate expression, (if not too bold,) to 
characterize these kinds of origins, which time 
hastens to consecrate. 

Let no one, then, permit himself to be dazzled 
by the most splendid human appearances. Who 
has ever concentrated in himself more of them 
than the extraordinary personage whose fall still 
resounds throughout Europe ? Has there ever 
been a sovereignty outwardly so well fortified, 
a greater consolidation of means, a man more 
powerful, more active, more formidable ? For 
a long time we saw him trample under foot 
twenty nations silent and frozen with dread ; 
and his power at length had struck certain roots 
which might have led even hope to despair. Yet 
he is fallen, and so low, that Pity while con- 
v/ templating him, draws back for fear of being 
touched by him. We may observe, moreover, 


xxi 


in passing, that for a reason somewhat different, it 
has become equally difficult to speak of this man, 
and of his august rival who has rid the world 
of him. The one escapes insult, and the other 
praise. But to return. 

In a work known only to a few persons at St. 
Petersburgh, the author wrote in the year 1810 , 
“ Jf, ivhen two parties encounter each other in a 
revolution, on one side precious victims are seen to 
fall, we may rest assured that this parly will triumph 
at last, notwithstanding all appearances to the con¬ 
trary 

The truth of this assertion has also just been veri¬ 
fied in a manner the most striking, and the least 
expected. The moral order has its laws as well as 
the physical, and the investigation of these laws 
is altogether worthy of occupying the meditations 
of a true philosopher. After an entire age of 
criminal trifling, it is high time to recall to mind 
what we are, and to trace all knowledge back 
to its source. It is this that has induced the 
author of this little work to permit it to escape 
from the timid portfolio which has retained it 


XXII 


for five years. He permits the date of it to 
stand,* and gives it to the world, word for word, 
just as it was written at that time. Friendship 
has called forth this publication, which perhaps 
is so much the worse for the author ; for this 
good dame is, on certain occasions, as blind as 
her brother. Be this as it may, the mind which 
has dictated the work enjoys a privilege well un¬ 
derstood ; he may doubtless be mistaken some¬ 
times on indifferent points ; he may exaggerate, 
or speak too confidently ; he may, in fine, offend 
against language or taste ; and in this case, so 
much the better for the evil disposed, if perchance 
there be any such ; but there will always be 
left to him the well founded hope of not displeas¬ 
ing any one, since he loves all the world ; and, 
moreover, he will enjoy the perfect assurance of 
interesting a numerous and very estimable class of 
men, without the possibility of injuring a single 
person !—a confidence altogether tranquilizing. 

*May, 1809. 


ESSAY. 










THE GENERATIVE PRINCIPLE 


O F 

POLITICAL CONSTITUTIONS, 

ETC., ETC. 


I. One of the grand errors of an age, which 
professed them all, was, to believe that a politi¬ 
cal constitution could be written and created à 
priori ; whilst reason and experience unite in 
establishing, that a constitution is a Divine 
work, and that that which is most funda- 
mental, and most essentially constitutional, in 



26 


the laws of 'a nation, is precisely what cannot 
be written. 

II. It has been often supposed to be an 
excellent piece of pleasantry upon French¬ 
men, to ask them in what book the Salic law 
was written ? But Jérôme Bignon answered, 
very apropos, and probably without knowing 
the full truth of what he said, that it was 
written in the hearts of Frenchmen. Let us 
suppose, in effect, that a law of so much im¬ 
portance existed only because it was written ; 
it is certain that any authority whatsoever 
which may have written it, will have the 
right of annulling it ; the law will not then 
have that character of sacredness and immu¬ 
tability which distinguishes laws truly con¬ 
stitutional. The essence of a fundamental 
law, is, that no one has the right to abolish 
it : now, how can it be above all , if any one 
has made it ? The agreement of the people is 


27 


impossible ; and even if it should be other» 
wise, a compact is not a law, and binds 
nobody, unless there is a superior authority 
by which it is guarantied. Locke endeavours 
to discover the characteristic feature of law in 
the expression of united wills ; but has thus 
happened to hit upon the characteristic which 
exactly excludes the idea of law . In fact, 
united wills form the regulation , and not the 
law , which manifestly and necessarily supposes 
a superior will that makes itself to be obeyed.* 
“In the system of Hobbes,” (the same that 
has had such currency in our day, under the 
pen of Locke,) “the force of civil laws reposes 
only upon a convention ; but if there is no 
natural law which requires the execution of 

* “ Man in the state of nature had only rights.On 

entering into society, I give up my private will in order to 
conform myself to law which is the general will .” Le 
Spectateur Français, tom. I, p. 194, has justly ridiculed 
this definition; but he might have observed, further, that it 
belonged to the age, above all to Locke, who has opened 
this century in a manner so pernicious. 



28 


laws that are made, of what use are they? 
Promises, engagements, oaths, are mere words : 
it is as easy to break this frivolous bond as to 
form it. Without the doctrine of a Divine 
Lawgiver, all moral obligation is chimerical. 
Power on one side, weakness on the other, 
constitutes the whole bond of human socie¬ 
ties.” * 

What a wise and profound theologian has 
here said on moral obligation, applies with 
equal truth to political or civil obligation. 
Law is not properly law , nor does it possess the 
true sanction of law, unless it emanates from a 
superior will ; so that its essential character is, 
that it is not the will of all: otherwise laws, 
as we have just remarked, will be only regu¬ 
lations ; and, as the author just cited further 
observes : “ Those who have had the liberty of 

* Bergier, Traité historique et dogmatique de la Religion, 
in*8vo, tome III, chap, iv, §. xii, pp. 330, 331. (After Ter- 
tulliau, Apol . 45.) 


29 


making these conventions have not taken away 
from themselves the power of revoking them ; 
and their descendants, who had no part in mak¬ 
ing them, are still less bound to observe them.” * 
Hence it is that the good sense of antiquity, 
happily anterior to sophisms, has sought, on 
every side, the sanction of laws, in a power 
above man, either in recognizing that sove¬ 
reignty comes from God, or in revering 
certain unwritten laws as proceeding from 
him. f 

* Bergier, Traité historique et dogmatique de la Religion, 
in-8vo, tome III, chap, iv, §. xii, pp. 330, 331. (After Ter- 
tullian, Apol. 45.) 

t [A striking instance of the error here combatted may 
be found, not to look elsewhere, in what occurred in France 
during the Revolutionary period. When the National As¬ 
sembly. which framed the Constitution of 1791, dissolved 
itself and gave place to the succeeding Legislative National 
Assembly , which had been elected according to the rules pre¬ 
scribed by that Constitution, the new legislature showed so 
little attention to formalities, and so much less regard for a 
constitution which they themselves had not framed, and 
which was not protected by the venerable sanction of anti¬ 
quity, that it had been hardly a year in existence, before, by 


I 


30 

III. The compilers of the Roman laws have 
placed, unpretendingly, in the first chapter of 
their collection, a very remarkable fragment 
of Greek jurisprudence. Among the . laws 
which govern us, says this passage, some are 
written , others are unwritten. Nothing can be 
more simple or profound. Is there any Turkish 
law which expressly permits the sovereign to 
pass sentence of death upon a man immediately, 
without the decision of an intermediate tribunal? 
Are we acquainted with any written law, even 
religious, which prohibits the sovereigns of 
Christian Europe from doing this ? * Yet the 


its own acts, it had become necessary for it to invite the na¬ 
tion, to elect a National Convention to determine the nature 
of its future government. This body framed a new Constitu¬ 
tion, under which the Directory was installed ; this last in 
its turn was superseded by Buonaparte as Consul under an¬ 
other new Constitution ; and so on indefinitely.—Trans.] 

* The Church prohibits her children , still more strongly 
than the civil laws , from being their own judges ; and it is 
by its spirit that Christian kings abstain from doing this y 
even in cases of high treason , and that they deliver criminals 
into the hands of judges t that they may be punished accord - 


31 


Turk is no more surprised at seeing his master 
pass sentence of immediate death upon a man, 
than at seeing him go to the Mosque. He be¬ 
lieves with all Asia, and even with all antiquity, 
that the right to inflict death immediately, is 
a legitimate appendage of the sovereignty. 
But our Princes would tremble at the bare 
idea of condemning a man to death ; for, ac¬ 
cording to our view, this condemnation would 
be an atrocious murder. And yet, I doubt 
whether it would be possible to prohibit them 
from doing this by a fundamental written law, 
without producing greater evils than those we 
might wish to prevent.* 

IV. Ask Roman history what was precisely 
the power of the Senate : she is silent, at least 
as to the exact limits of that power. We see, 

ing to laws and forms of justice .— (Pascal, Lettres Provin¬ 
ciales, Lettre xiv.) This passage is very important, and 
should be found elsewhere. 


32 


indeed, in general, that the power of the peo¬ 
ple and that of the Senate mutually balanced 
each other, and that the opposition was unceas¬ 
ing ; we observe also that patriotism or weari¬ 
ness, weakness or violence, terminated these 
dangerous struggles: but we know no more 
about it.* In looking upon these grand histori¬ 
cal scenes, we are sometimes tempted to believe 
that affairs would have gone on much better, if 
there had been special laws defining these 
powers ; but this would be a great errour : such 
laws, always being compromitted by unexpect¬ 
ed cases and forced exceptions, would not have 


* I have often reflected upon this passage of Cicero :— 
Leges Livcei prcesertim uno versiculo senatus puncto temporis 
sublatce sunt. — (De Leg. II, 6.) By what right did the 
Senate take this liberty ? and why did the People permit it 
to be done ? It is surely not easy to answer ; but at what 
can we be astonished in matters of this sort, since after all 
that has been written on history and Roman antiquities, it 
has been necessary in our day to write dissertations in order 
to know how the Senate recruited itself. 


33 


lasted six months, or they would have over¬ 
turned the Republic. 

V. The English Constitution is an example 
nearer to us, and, therefore, more striking. 
Whoever examines it with attention, will see 
that it goes only in not going (if this play 
upon words is permissible.) It is maintained 
only by the exceptions. The habeas corpus , 
for example, has been so often and for so long 
time suspended, that it is doubted whether the 
exception has not become the rule. Suppose 
for a moment that the authors of this famous 
act had undertaken to fix the cases in which 
it should be suspended ; they would ipso facto 
have annihilated it. 

VI. At the sitting of the House of Com¬ 
mons, June 26, 1807, a lord cited the authority 
of a great statesman to show that the King had 
no right to dissolve Parliament during the 


34 


session ; * but this opinion was contradicted : 
Where is the law ? Attempt to make a law, and 
to fix exclusively by writing the case where 
the King has this right, and you will produce a 
revolution. The King, said one of the mem¬ 
bers, has this right when the occasion is im¬ 
portant ; but what is an important occasion ? 
Try to decide this too by writing. 

VII. But, there is another fact still more 
singular. All the world remember the great 
question agitated, with so much earnestness, in 

* [Lord Holland, in his speech against the Address to 
the King, said, on the late dissolution of Parliament, “ is 
there no différence between dissolving Parliament in the 
recess, and in the midst of a session? The opinion of one 
of the greatest men this Country boasts, I mean Lord 
Somers, was, that to dissolve a Parliament in the midst of 
a session, was, if not absolutely, at least almost, illegal ; 
and I will not allow, for a moment, that a prorogation for a 
day, followed by a dissolution, can make the slighest differ¬ 
ence.” See Cobbett’s Pari. Reports, which state the ma¬ 
jority for the original Address as very large, sustaining the 
King’s prerogative.—Trans.] 


35 


England, in the year 1806. The question was, 
whether the holding of a judicial employment , 
together with a place as member of the Privy 
Council , was or was not in accordance with the 
principles of the English Constitution ? At 
the sitting of the same House of Commons, on 
the third of March, a member observed : Eng- v 
land is governed by a body (the Privy Council) 
not known by Legislature. Only , he added, 

it is connived at. * 

There is, then, in this wise and justly famous 
England, a body, which governs, and in truth 
does everything, but which the Constitution 
does not recognize. Delolme has overlooked 
this feature, which I could corroborate by many 
others. 


* See London Chronicle of March 4, 1806. Observe 
that this word Legislature , includes the three powers ; it 
follows, from this assertion, that even the King is ignorant 
of such a body as the Privy Council. Yet I believe that 
he at least has an inkling of it. 


36 


After this can any one talk to us about 
written constitutions and constitutional laws 
made à priori. We cannot conceive how a 
sensible man could imagine the possibility of 
such a chimera. If any one should undertake 
to make a law in England, in order to give a 
constitutional existence to the Privy Council, 
and subsequently to regulate and rigorously 
circumscribe its privileges and attributes, with 
the precautions necessary for limiting its influ¬ 
ence and preventing its abuse, he would over¬ 
turn the State. * 

* [We think that Count de Maistre has here fallen into a 
verbal error, which seems to us to deserve correction. 
“ The constitution,” says Nat. Bacon, “ knows of no other 
counsel than the Privy Council. The sense of state once 
contracted into a Privy Council is soon recontracted into a 
Cabinet Council, and last of all into a favourite or two.” 
The case referred to in the text is that of Lord Ellenborough, 
who was Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, Privy 
Counsellor, and member of the Cabinet, at the same time. 
The question, so far as can be gathered from the debates, 
was, whether Lord E. could, constitutionally, hold his seat 
as member of the Cabinet to which he had been summoned 


3Î 


The true English Constitution is that ad¬ 
mirable, unique, and infallible public spirit, 
beyond all praise, which guides every thing, 
preserves every thing, saves every thing. 
That which is written is nothing. * 

by the King. The deliberations of the Cabinet were 
not like those, of the body of the Privy Council, from 
which it is generally selected, confined to proceedings 
of a judicial nature, but embraced all the political con¬ 
cerns of the country of every description. The members 
of the Cabinet Council were deemed to be the con¬ 
fidential advisers of the Crown in the exercise of all its 
functions ; it was not responsible as a Cabinet, and not at 
all, under that appellation and description, recognized by 
the Constitution; the law knowing nothing of its members, 
but as Privy Counsellors. To be a member of the Cabinet, 
then, was necessarily to be a party to all the measures of the 
administration, and to be associated and identified with the 
interests of the executive government. It was this intimate 
connection between a judge and the King’s ministers, this 
association and identification of a judge with the executive 
government, which Was the thing objected to, though finally 
carried. To the Cabinet, then, and not to the Privy Coun¬ 
cil, the matter in the text should be referred.—Trans.] 

* The turbulent government of England, says Hume, 
ever fluctuating between privilege and prerogative, would 
afford a variety of precedents which might be pleaded on 
both sides. —(History of England, James I, chap, xlvii, a. d. 


38 


VIII. Towards the end of the last century, 
a great outcry was made against a Minister, 
who had conceived the project of introducing 
this same English Constitution (or what was 
called by that name) into a kingdom which 
was convulsed, and which demanded a consti¬ 
tution of some kind, with a sort of frenzy. * 

1621.) Hume, in thus speaking the truth, is not wanting 
in respect to his Country ; he declares both what is, and 
ought to be. 

[“Il est une erreur très-funeste, de s’attacher trop rigid— 
ment aux monumens anciens. Il faut sans doute les respec¬ 
ter, mais il faut surtout considérer ce que les jurisconsultes 
appellent le dernier étaU Toute constitution libre est de 
sa nature variable, et variable en proportion qu’elle est 
libre; vouloir la ramener à ses rudimens, sans en rien rabat¬ 
tre, c’est une entreprise folle.” De Maistre, Considéra¬ 
tions sur la France. 

Hume says again, on this point, “ All human governments, 
particularly those of a mixed frame, are in continual fluc¬ 
tuation.”—Hist. Eng., Chas. I, chap. 1,—Trans. 

* [M. Neckar, who was one of the Ministers of Louis 
XYI, during a short period of the troublous times of the 
French Revolution, is the person referred to in the text. 
“A spirit of innovation ,” says Alison, “ the exciting cause, 
as physicians would say, the immediate source of the con¬ 
vulsion, had spread like a disease throughout the kingdom. 


39 


He was wrong, if you please, so far at least as 
one can be wrong when he acts in good faith ; 
which here may well be presumed, and which I 
believe with all my heart. But who at that time 
had the right of condemning him ? Vel duo ) vel 
nemo. He did not declare that he desired to 
destroy any thing of his own accord ; he merely 
wished, he said, to substitute one thing which 
appeared to him reasonable, for another which 
had ceased to be wanted, and which, for that 
very reason, no longer existed. And besides, 
if the principle is granted, (and it was in effect,) 


It seized all classes, embraced all subjects, overwhelmed all 
understandings. M. Neckar conceived the idea of forming 
the States into two Chambers, similar to the House of Lords 
and Commons in England ; and to meet the increasing 
dangers, he was preparing the plan of a constitution, calcu¬ 
lated to satisfy all classes, and tranquillize the public 
mind. His measures were designed to form a government 
very similar to the limited monarchy of England ; and such 
as engrafted on a feudal monarchy offered the fairest pros¬ 
pect of stability.” Etc., etc.—Alison’s Hist, of French Re¬ 
volution, vol. I, chap. Ill, London, 1833.—Trans.] 


40 


that man can create a constitution , this Minis¬ 
ter (who was certainly a man) had the same 
right to make his own as well as another, and 
more than another. Were the doctrines on 
this point doubted ? Was it not believed, on 
all sides, that a constitution was the work of 
intelligence, like an ode or tragedy ? Had not 
Thomas Paine declared, with a profoundness 
that charmed the Universities, that a constitu¬ 
tion does not exist , so long as one cannot put it 
into his pocket ? The eighteenth century, 
which distrusted itself in nothing, as a matter 
of course, hesitated at nothing ; and I do not 
believe that it has produced a single tyro of 
any talent, who has not made three things on 
leaving college,—a system of education for 
youth, a Constitution, and a World. If, then, 
a man in the maturity of his age and tal¬ 
ent, profoundly versed in economical science 
and in the philosophy of the time, had at¬ 
tempted only the second of these things, I 


41 


should then have regarded him as exceedingly 
moderate ; but I confess that he appears to me 
a real prodigy of wisdom and modesty, when 
I see him, substituting (at least as he believes) 
experience for foolish theories, ask respectfully 
of the English a constitution, instead of mak¬ 
ing one himself. You say, even this was not 
possible. I know it : but he did not, and how 
could he have known it ? Name to me the 
man who had advanced this opinion. 

IX. The more we examine the influence of 
human agency in the formation of political con¬ 
stitutions, the greater will be our conviction that 
it enters there only in a manner infinitely sub¬ 
ordinate, or as a simple instrument; and I do 
not believe there remains the least doubt of the 
incontestable truth of the following proposi¬ 
tions :— 

1. That the fundamental principles of polit¬ 
ical constitutions exist before all written law. 

4 


* 


2. That a constitutional law is, and can only 
be, the developement or sanction of an un¬ 
written pre-existing right. 

3. That which is most essential, most in¬ 
trinsically constitutional, and truly fundamental, 
is never written, and could not be, without 
endangering the state. 

4. That the weakness and fragility of a con¬ 
stitution are actually in direct proportion to the 
multiplicity of written constitutional articles. * 

X. We are deceived on this point by a 
sophism so natural, that it entirely escapes our 
attention. Because man acts, he thinks he 
acts alone ; and because he has the conscious¬ 
ness of his liberty, he forgets his dependence. 
In the physical order, he listens to reason ; 
for although he can, for example, plant an 
acorn, water it, etc., he is convinced that he 

* This may serve for a commentary on the celebrated 
remark of Tacitus : Pessimœ Reipublicœ plurimœ Leges. 


43 


does not make the oaks, because he witnesses 
their growth and perfection without the aid of 
human power ; and moreover, that he does not 
make the acorn : but in the social order, where 
he is present, and acts, he fully believes that 
he is really the sole author of all that is done 
by himself. This is, in a sense, as if the 
trowel should believe itself the architect. Man 
is a free, intelligent, and noble being : without 
doubt ; but he is not less an instrument of 
God , according to a happy expression of Plu¬ 
tarch, in a beautiful passage which here 
introduces itself of its own accord : 

We must not wonder , he says, if the most 
beautiful and greatest things in the world are 
done by the will and providence of God ; seeing 
that in all the greatest and principal parts of 
the world there is a soul : for the organ and 
tool of the soul is the body , and the soul is the 
instrument of God. And as the body has of 
itself many movements , and as the greater 


44 


and more noble are derived from the soul, even 
so it is with the soul ; some of its operations 
being self-moved, while in others it is directed, 
disciplined, and guided, by God, as it pleases 
Him ; being itself the most beautiful organ and 
ingenious instrument possible : for it would be a 
strange thing indeed that the wind, the water, 
the clouds, and the rains, should be instruments 
of God, with which He nourishes and supports 
many creatures, and also destroys many others, 
and that He should never make use of living 
beings to perform any of His works. For it is 
far more reasonable that they, depending en¬ 
tirely on the power of God, should obey His 
direction, and accomplish all His will, than that 
the bow should obey the Scythians, the lyre 
and flute the Greeks .* 

No one could write better: and I do not 
believe that these beautiful reflections could be 


Plutarch’s Banquet of the Seven Sages. 


45 


more justly applied, than to the formation of 
political constitutions, where it may be said, 
with equal truth, that man does every thing, 
and does nothing. 

XI. If there is any thing well known, it 
is the comparison of Cicero, on the subject of 
the Epicurean system, which proposed to build 
a world with atoms falling at random in space. 
I would rather believe , says the great Orator, 
that letters , thrown into the air , would , on fall¬ 
ing , arrange themselves in such a manner as 
to form a poem. A thousand voices have re¬ 
peated and commended this thought ; yet, so 
far as I know, it has not occurred to any per¬ 
son to give it the completeness which it wants. 
Let us suppose that printed characters, scattered 
plentifully in the air, should, on coming to the 
ground form the Athalie of Racine ; what 
would be the inference ? That an intelligence 
had directed the fall and the arrangement of 


46 


the characters . Good sense will never con¬ 
clude otherwise. 

XII. Let us now consider some one politi¬ 
cal constitution, that of England, for example. 
It certainly was not made à priori. Her 
Statesmen never assembled themselves to¬ 
gether and said, Let us create three powers , 
balancing them in such a manner , etc. No 
one of them ever thought of such a thing. 
The Constitution is the work of circumstances, 
and the number of these is infinite. Roman 
laws, ecclesiastical laws, feudal laws ; Saxon, 
Norman, and Danish customs ; the privileges, 
prejudices, and claims of all orders ; wars, 
revolts, revolutions, the Conquest, Crusades ; 
virtues of every kind, and all vices ; knowledge 
of every sort, and all errors and passions ;—all 
these elements, in short, acting together, and 
forming, by their admixture and reciprocal 
action, combinations multiplied by myriads of 


47 


millions, have produced at length, after many 
centuries, the most complex unity, and happy 
equilibrium of political powers that the world 
has ever seen. * 


* Tacitus believed this form of government would never 
be other than an ideal theory or transient experiment. 
“The best of all governments,” says he, (after Cicero as 
we, know,) [esse optime constituam rempublicam , quœ. ex 
tribus generibus illis, regali , optimo, et populari, sit modice 
confusa ,] “ would be that which should result from the 
mixture of three powers, balancing each other; but this 
government can never exist, or if it should exhibit itself , 
would never endure .” (Ann. iv, 33.) English good sense, 
however, can make it last a much longer time than could 
be imagined, by subordinating continually, but more or less, 
the theory, or what are called the principles, to the lessons 
of experience and moderation : which would be impossible, 
if the principles were written. 

[Th egerm of this form of government appears, according 
to Plutarch, in his Life of Lycurgus, to have been first includ¬ 
ed by this Lawgiver, in his establishment of the Senate. 
“ For the State,” says he, “ which before had no firm basis 
to stand upon, but leaned one while towards an absolute 
monarchy (when the King had the upper hand,) and another 
while towards a pure democracy (when the people had the 
better of it,) finding in this establishment of the Senate a 
counterpoise, which always kept things in a just equilib¬ 
rium, preserved a firm order and settlement. For the 
Senate adhered to the King, so far as to oppose a demo- 


48 


XIII. Now since these elements, thus pro¬ 
jected into space, have arranged themselves in 
such beautiful order, without a single man, 
among the innumerable multitude who have 
acted in this vast field, having ever known 
what he had done relatively to the whole, nor 
foreseen what would happen, it follows, inevit¬ 
ably, that these elements were guided in their 
fall by an infallible hand, superior to man. 
The greatest folly, perhaps, in an age of follies, 
was in believing that fundamental laws could 
be written à priori , whilst they are evidently 
the work of a power above man ; and whilst 
the very committing them to* writing, long 

after, is the most certain sign of their nullity. 

j 

• • 

cracy, and on the other side assisted the people to prevent 
tyranny.” ^ 

The celebrated Mr. Fox, once Prime Minister of England, 
remarked, in a speech in the House of Commons, “that he 
always thought any of the simple, unbalanced governments 
bad ; simple monarchy, simple aristocracy, simple democ¬ 
racy ; he held them all imperfect or vicious ; all were bad 
by themselves; the composition alone was good.”—Trans.] 


49 


XIV. It is very remarkable, that God, hav¬ 
ing condescended to speak to men, has Himself 
unfolded these truths, in the two revelations 
which, through His abounding goodness He 
has given to us. A very able man, who has 
made, in my opinion, a kind of epoch in our 
age, by reason of the desperate conflict which 
he exhibits in his writings, between the most 
frightful prejudices of the age, of sect, of 
habit, etc., and the purest intentions, the most 
virtuous emotions, and the most valuable know¬ 
ledge ;—this able man, I say, has decided, “ that 
a teaching coming immediately from God , or 
given only by His direction , ought primarily 
to certify to men the existence of this Being.”* 

* [ It is very probable that reference is here made to 
Jean-Jacques Rousseau. See Collection complete des 
œuvres, tom. ix, Liv. iv, d'Emile. Prof, de foi du Vicaire 
Savoyard. He was one of the most dangerous sophists 
of his age, “ et cependant le plus dépourvu de véritable 
science, de sagacité et surtout de profondeur, avec une 
profondeur apparente qui est toute dans les mots.” As to 
his intrinsic merit, La Harpe says, Tout, jusqu ’ à la 
vérité , trompe dans ses écrits. — Trans.] 


50 


The opposite of this is the truth ; for the 
primary character of this instruction is not to 
reveal directly the existence or the attributes of 
God, but to suppose the whole already known, 
without our understanding why or in what 
manner. Thus, it says not, There is, or you 
shall believe in only one God, eternal, almighty, 
etc. It says, (and it is its first word,) under a 
form purely narrative, In the beginning, God 
created, etc., which supposes that the dogma 
is known before the writing. 

XY. Let us pass on to Christianity, the 
greatest of all imaginable institutions, since it 
is wholly Divine, made for all men and every 
age : we shall find it subjected to the general 
law. Its Divine Author was certainly able to 
write Himself, or to cause His doctrines to be 
written ; yet He did neither one nor the other, 
at least in a legislative form. The New Tes¬ 
tament, porterior to the death of the Law-giver, 


51 


and even the establishment of His religion, 
exhibits a narration of admonitions, moral pre¬ 
cepts, exhortations, commands, threats, etc. ; 
hut in no wise a collection of dogmas ex¬ 
pressed in an imperative form. The Evangel¬ 
ists, in describing that last supper where God 
loved us even unto the end, had there a good 
opportunity of commanding our belief by writ¬ 
ing ; they guard themselves, however, from 
declaring or ordaining any thing. We read, 
indeed, in their admirable history, Go , teach! 
but not at all, teach this or that. If doctrine 
appears under the pen of the sacred historian, 
he simply expresses it as a thing already 
known.* 


* It is very remarkable, that even the Evangelists did not 
take the pen until a late period, and principally to contra¬ 
dict the false histories published in their times. The ca- / 

nonical epistles originated in accidental causes. Scripture t 

never entered into the primitive plan of the founders. Mill, 
though protestant, has expressly recognized this. (Proleg. 
in Nov. Test. Græc. p. I, No. 65.) And Hobbes had already 


52 


The symbols, which appeared afterwards, 
are professions of faith for its own recognition, 

made the same observation in England. [“ When a man 
cometh to look into those transcendent writings, he finds 
them to be works of a sort of innocent, harmless men, that 
had little acquaintance or familiarity with the world, and 
consequently not much interested in the troubles and quar¬ 
rels of several countries ; that though they are all but 
necessary, yet were they written occasionally , rather than 
out of design .”—Hobbes’ Tripos, in three discourses, Disc. 
III. See Molesworth’s Ed. of his works, vol. iv.—Trans.] 
[The following passage fromPaley, may be cited in con¬ 
firmation, incidentally at least, of the view taken in the 
text : “ Whilst the Apostles were busied in preaching 

and travelling, in collecting disciples, in forming and regu¬ 
lating societies of converts, in supporting themselves 
against opposition ; whilst they exercised their ministry 
under the harassings of frequent persecutions, and in a 
state of almost continual alarm, it is not probable that, in 
this engaged, anxious, and unsettled condition of life, they 
would think immediately, of writing histories for the infor¬ 
mation of the public or of posterity. But it is probable, 
that emergencies might draw from some of them occasional 
letters upon the subject of their mission, to converts or to 
societies of converts, with which they were connected ; or 
that they might address written discourses and exhortations 
to the disciples of the institution at large, which would be 
received and read with a respect proportioned to the char¬ 
acter of the writer. Accounts in the mean time would 
get abroad of the extraordinary things that had been 


53 


or for contradicting the errors of the moment. 
In them, we read, we believe ; never, you shall 


passing, written with different degrees of information and 
correctness. The extension of the Christian society, which 
could no longer be instructed by a personal intercourse with 
the Apostles, and the possible circulation of imperfect or 
erroneous narratives , would soon teach some amongst them 
the expediency of sending forth authentic memoirs of the 
life and doctrine of their Master. When accounts appeared, 
... .found to coincide with what the Apostles and first preach¬ 
ers of religion had taught , other accounts would fall into dis¬ 
use and neglect .” “ This,” he proceeds to say, “ seems the 

natural progress of the business ; and with this the records 
in our possession, and the evidence concerning them, cor¬ 
respond. ... But as these letters were not written to prove 
the truth of the Christian religion, in the sense in which we 
regard that question; nor to convey information of facts, of 
which those to whom the letters were written had been pre¬ 
viously informed ; we are not to look in them for anything 
more than incidental allusions to the Christian history.”— 
See Evidences of Christianity, Chap. viii. 

Eusebius may also be cited, to the same effect. “ J\Tor 
were the Apostles of Christ greatly concerned about theiorit- 
ing of books , being engaged in a more excellent ministry , 
which is above all human power .” Eccles. Hist. L. III. c. 24. 

A passage of Anthony Grant’s is to the point. “ Wher¬ 
ever the Gospel took root, there a church was formed— 
was formed, not round a doctrine, but round a commissioned 

teacher;.who taught what had been imparted to him. 

.... But at length, writings became necessary to preserve the 


54 


believe. We recite them individually ; we 
chant them in the temples, on the lyre and 

truth so intrusted to man from being either lost, or mutilat¬ 
ed, or corrupted, etc. . . . The Sacred Writings themselves, 
especially the Epistles, bear the mark of being adapted to 
those who had already been instructed in the Christian 
faith. They are composed in an unsystematic manner, 
especially ill suited to minds unacquainted with the outlines 
of that doctrine which they treat of ; fundamental tenets 
and inferences are mixed together ; and many portions of 
them are designed to supplement , or correct , or limit , what 
had been before communicated See Bampton Lectures, 
1843, Lect. III. 

The same idea may be still further illustrated by the same 
author. “That in order to the perpetuation and transmis¬ 
sion of principles, or religious truths, it seems necessary 
that these should be embodied in certain institutions and 
outward forms, and conveyed through a definite channel. 
Thus, laws have ever been connected with a settled mode of 
administration ; religious tenets have been joined to external 
ceremonies and rites t and transmitted by a separate order , 

as well as preserved in writing.That the Church, as the 

visible institution of Christ, is the divinely ordained in 

strument for propagating Christianity in the world ;. 

that the promise of success in this work is not engaged 
(Rom. x. 14, 15) to the mere distribution of the written 
word , but to the preaching of the Gospel by living wit¬ 
nesses; .... that the place held by the Holy Scriptures 
in the economy of instruction, is that of proving and con¬ 
firming the previous elementary teaching of the Church, 
conveyed through its formularies, and the oral exposi- 




55 


organ,* as true prayers, because they are for¬ 
mulas of submission, of confidence, and of 

tions of its messengers may be clearly shown “from 
reasonable probability, from the revealed will of God, and 
from Apostolic practice .... To this method all histori¬ 
cal records of the propagation of the Gospel bear witness 
and it is illustrated by the well-known and striking passage 
of Irenæus, who wrote, that ‘ many nations of barbarians, 
without paper and ink, had, through the Holy Spirit, the 
words of salvation written in their hearts.’—Adv. Hæres. 
III. chap, iv.) In reality, this process is only in accordance 
with the method pursued in the communication of all 
knowledge; in imparting which, a teacher, speaking with 
authority, and claiming the confidence of the instructed, is 
a condition upon which alone it can be received.”—Ibid. 

Richard Baxter may be cited to the same point. “ There¬ 
fore the Church had a summary and symbol of Christianity, 
as I said before, about twelve years before any book of the 
J\Tew Testament was written , and about sixty-six before the 
whole was written; and this of God’s own making : and 
which was agreed on when many books of the New Tes¬ 
tament were not agreed on.” Catholic Theology, Intro¬ 
duction, 1675, Fol. See Wordsworth’s Institutes, vol. I, 
p. 272. 

Our last authority confirming the same view, shall be the 
New Testament itself. Not to say any thing of the “ faith¬ 
ful sayings ” and “traditions” to which occasional allu¬ 
sions are made, we will refer our readers to the introduction 
to St. Luke’s Gospel.—Trans.] 

* In chordis et organi, Ps. cl., 4. 


56 


faith, addressed to God, and not ordinances 
addressed to men. I should he glad to see the 
Confession of Augsburgh , or the Thirty-nine 
Articles , set to music ; this would be divert¬ 
ing.* 

The first symbols are far from containing 
the announcement of all our dogmas ; on the 
contrary, Christians then would have regarded 
the announcement of them all as a great sin. 
The same is true of the Holy Scriptures : there 
never was an idea more shallow than that of 
seeking in them for the totality of the Christian 
doctrines ; there is not a line in these writings 
which declares, or even allows us to discover, 
the design of making from them a code or 

* Reason can only speak ; it is love which chants ; 
therefore we chant our symbols ; for faith is only a belief , 
through love : she resides not merely in the understanding, 
she penetrates further and takes root in the will. A philo¬ 
sophical theologian has said, with much truth and ingenuity, 
“ There is a difference between believing, and judging what 
it is necessary to believe.” Aliud est credere , aliud judi- 
care esse credendum. Leon. Lessii Opuscula, Lugd. 1651, 
in fol., pag. 556, col. 2. (De predestinatione.) 


57 


dogmatic declaration of all the articles of 
faith.* 

XYI. More than this : if a people possess 
one of these codes of belief we may be sure 
of three things : 

1. That the religion of this people is false. 

2. That it has written its religious code in 
a paroxysm of fever. 

3. That this code will be ridiculed in a 
little while among this very nation, and that 
it will possess neither power nor durability. 
Such are, for example, those famous articles,* 
which are signed by more than read , and read 
by more than believe themf Not only is this 
catalogue of dogmas counted for nothing, or 
next to nothing, in the country which gave 
them birth ; but furthermore, it is manifest, 

*[“ Nor were the Sacred Writings intended to supersede, 
even afterwards,” after the completion of the sacred 
canon, “ other concurrent and authoritative teaching 
Grant’s Bampton Lect. 1843. Lect. III.—Trans.] 

t See Gibbon’s Memoirs [by Milman, Chap. III. Ed. 1840.] 
5 


58 


even to a foreign eye, that the illustrious 
possessors of this sheet of paper are greatly 
embarrassed with it. In fact, they wish them¬ 
selves well rid of it, because the national 
mind, enlightened by time, has grown weary 
of it ; and besides it recalls to them an un- 
happy origin : but the constitution is written . 

XVII. The English doubtless, would 
never have asked for the Great Charter , had 
not the privileges of the nation been violated ; 
nor would they have asked for it, if these 
privileges had not existed before the Charter. 
What is true of the State, in. this respect, 
is also true of the Church : if Christianity 
had never been attacked, there never would 
have been any writings to settle the dogmas ; 
nor would the dogmas have been settled by 
writing, had they not pre-existed in their 
natural state, which is the oral. 

The real authors of the Council of Trent 
were the two grand innovators of the sixteenth 


59 


century.* Their disciples having become 
more calm, have since proposed to us to ex¬ 
punge this fundamental law, because it contains 
some hard words for them ; and they have 
endeavoured to tempt us, by indicating to us 
the possibility of a reunion, on that condition, 
which would make us accomplices instead of 
rendering us friends ; but this demand is 
neither theological nor philosophical. They 
themselves formerly introduced into relig¬ 
ious language those words which now weary 
them. Let us desire that they should now 
learn to pronounce them. Faith, if a sophis¬ 
tical opposition had never forced her to write, 
would be a thousand times more angelic : she 
weeps over these decisions which revolt ex- 

* The same observation might be made on going back to 
the times of Arius. The Church has never sought to write 
her dogmas, she has always been forced to do it. 

[“The only variations in respect of Christian doctrine 
the Catholic admits are, as Father Perrone,” the present 
Professor of Theology at Rome, “says, new modes of ex¬ 
pression adopted on the occasion of novel errors.”—Trans.] 


60 


torted from her, and which were always 
evils, since they all suppose doubt or ag¬ 
gression, and could only arise in the midst 
of the most dangerous commotions. The 
state of war raised these venerable ramparts 
around the truth : they undoubtedly protected 
her, but at the same time concealed her : they 
rendered her unassailable ; but by that very 
means less accessible. Ah ! this is not what 
she craves, she who would embrace the whole 
human race in her arms. 

XVIII. I have spoken of Christianity as a 
system of belief; I will now consider it as a 
sovereignty, in its most numerous association. 
There it is monarchical, as all the world 
know ; and this is as it should be, since mon¬ 
archy becomes, by the very nature of things, 
the more necessary, in proportion as the associ¬ 
ation becomes more numerous. We do not 
forget that an observation from an impure 


61 


mouth has met with approval in our day, af¬ 
firming that France was geographically mon¬ 
archical. It would be difficult indeed to ex¬ 
press this incontestable truth in a manner more 
happy. But if the extent of France repels 
the very idea of every other form of govern¬ 
ment, much more this sovereignty, which, by 
the essential nature of its constitution, will 
always have subjects on every part of the 
globe, requires that it should be only monar¬ 
chical ; and experience is found on this point 
in perfect accordance with theory. This ad¬ 
mitted, who would not believe that such a 
monarchy would be found more strictly de¬ 
fined and circumscribed than all others, in the 
prerogative of its chief ? It is however alto¬ 
gether otherwise. Read the innumerable vol¬ 
umes conceived and brought forth by foreign 
war, and even by a species of civil war which 
has its advantages as well as inconveniences, 
you will see on every side that facts only are 


62 


cited ; and it is a very remarkable thing es¬ 
pecially, that the supreme tribunal should 
constantly allow dispute upon the question 
which presents itself to every mind as the 
most fundamental of the constitution, without 
ever having wished to determine it by a for¬ 
mal law ; and thus it should be, if I am not 
greatly deceived, by reason of the very funda¬ 
mental importance of the question.* Some 
men without authority, and rash through weak¬ 
ness, attempted to decide it in 1682, in spite of 
a great man ; and it was one of the greatest 
acts of folly which has ever been committed 
in the world. Its monument which remains 
to us, is doubtless to be condemned in every 
respect ; but it is especially so from one feature 


* I know not whether Englishmen have remarked that 
the most learned and ardent defender of the sovereignty 
which is here referred to, entitles one of his chapters thus : 
A mixed monarchy tempered by aristocracy and democracy 
is better than a pare monarchy. (Bellarminus, de summo. 
Pontif. cap. III.) Not bad for a fanatic ! 


# 


63 

which has not been considered, although it 
invites assault from enlightened criticism more 
than every other. The famous Declaration 
dared to decide, by writing, without even 
apparent necessity, (which carried the fault to 
excess, ) a question which ought ever to he left 
to a certain practical wisdom, enlightened by 
the universal conscience. This is the only 
point of view which at all coincides with the 
design of this work ; but it is altogether 
worthy of the meditations of every just mind 
and upright heart.* 

* [In the year 1678, Pope Innocent XI. became engaged 
in the controversy of his three predecessors with Louis 
XIV. The subject of it was the extension of a right 
called in France the régale , by which the King claimed the 
collation to all benefices which became vacant in the 
diocese of a deceased bishop before the nomination of his 
successor, and likewise, the granting of the investiture to 
every new bishop, and requiring him on the occasion to 
swear allegiance to him as his liege lord. These claims 
had been vigorously opposed by the predecessors of Inno¬ 
cent, and maintained with no less vigour by the King. 
Innocent, though observing the same general line of policy 
as his predecessors, opposed a stronger resistance to the 




64 

XIX. These ideas (taken in their general 
sense) were not unknown to the ancient phi- 

measures of Louis. The Pope admonished even to the 
third time; but his admonitions were not regarded by the 
King. He sent forth bulls and mandates, and the monarch 
opposed their execution by the terror of penal laws, and 
the authority of severe edicts against all who should 
dare to treat them with the smallest regard. Innocent, 
who possessed a high spirit, and pursued all his pur¬ 
poses with inflexible firmness, did not lose courage at the 
sight of these vigorous proceedings ; but threatened to 
make use of every weapon which God had placed in his 
hands. These proceedings on the part of the Pope at 
length determined Louis to summon the famous Assembly 
of Bishops, which met at Paris in 1682, and drew up the 
four celebrated propositions, as a manifesto of the Gallican 
Liberties. 

1. That the temporal power is independent of the spirit¬ 
ual, and that the authority of the Pope is merely spiritual. 

2. That general councils are superior to the Pope. 

B. That the rules, institutions, and observances of the 
Gallican Church are inviolable, and that the power of the 
Pope ought to be ruled by canons. 

4. That the principal authority belongs to the Pope in 
questions of faith, but his decisions are subject to amend¬ 
ment, so long as they have not received the assent of the 
Church. 

These propositions were adopted by the whole Assembly, 
and proposed to the whole body of the clergy, and to all the 
Universities throughout the kingdom, as a sacred rule of 


65 


losophers : they keenly felt the impotency, I 
had almost said the nothingness, of writing, 
in great institutions ; but no one of them has 
seen this truth more clearly, or expressed it 
more happily, than Plato, whom we always 
find the first upon the track of all great truths. 
According to him, “ the man who is wholly 

faith. At the same time the King issued an edict, command¬ 
ing all his subjects to receive them, with a strict prohibi¬ 
tion against asserting or maintaining the contrary doctrine. 
—See Aikin’s General Biography, vol. v. and Chaudon et 
Deland.ine Dictionaire Historique, art. Louis XIV. 

The first three articles are a repetition of principles de¬ 
clared and maintained before ; but the fourth, it will 
readily be perceived, is the one referred to in the text, and 
the most important, since it limits not only the temporal 
but the spiritual authority of the Pope. 

“ Jamais peut-être on ne commit d’imprudence plus 
fatale; jamais la passion n’aveugla davantage des hommes 
d’ailleurs très éclairés. Il y a dans tous les gouvernements 
des choses qui doivent être laissées dans une salutaire 
obscurité, qui sont suffisamment claires pour le bon sens, 
mais qui cessent de l’être du moment où la science entre¬ 
prend de les éclaircir davantage, et de les circonscrire avec 
précision par le raisonnement et surtout par l’écriture.”— 
See J. De Maistre, de l’Eglise Gallicane, in-8vo. Chap. 
III. p. 127. Lyon, 1838.— Trans.] 


66 


indebted to writing for his instruction, will 
only possess the appearance of wisdom .* * * § The 
word, he adds, is to writing, what the man is 
to his portrait. The productions of the pencil 
present themselves to our eyes as living things ; 
but if we interrogate them, they maintain a 
dignified silence .f It is the same with writing, 
which knows not what to say to one man , nor 
what to conceal from another. If you attack 
it or insult it without a cause, it cannot defend 
itself ; for its author is never present to sustain 
it.% So that he who imagines himself capable 
of establishing, clearly and permanently, one 
single doctrine, by writing alone, is a great 
blockhead. <§> If he really possessed the true 


* JoÇùaocpoi ysyovorsç terri oocpwv. —Plat, in Phoedr. Opp. 
tom. x, Edit. Bipont, p. 881. 

t Sifiveôç nùw (fiyà. —Ibid. p. 382. 

$ Tov TiaTQoç àti durai florj&ov. —Ibid. p. 382. 

§ ThtlXijg av evij-dsiaç yipei. —Ibid. p. 382. Word for 
word, he is surfeited with folly. Let every body, in our 
country, take care that this species of plethora does not 
become endemic. 


67 


germs of truth, he would not indulge the 
thought, that with a little black liquid and a 
pen * he could cause them to germinate in the 
world, defend them from the inclemency of the 
season, and communicate to them the necessa¬ 
ry efficacy. As for the man who undertakes to 
write laws or civil constitutions ,f and who 
fancies that, because he has written them, 
he is able to give them adequate evidence and 
stability, whoever he may be, a private man 
or legislator, J he disgraces himself, whether 
we say it or not ; || for he has proved there¬ 
by that he is equally ignorant of the nature of 
inspiration and delirium, right and wrong, 
good and evil. Now, this ignorance is a re¬ 
proach, though the entire mass of the vulgar 
should unite in its praise.” § 

* ’Ev l 'San uiXavi âiù xaAauov. —Plat, in Phoedr. Opp. 
tom. x, Edit. Bipont. p. 384. 

t Nùuovç TtOelg, avyyoau^a noX'ixixbv yçûcpwv.— Ibid. p. 386. 

X *Idla >/ drrftoola. —Ibid. 

|| Eirt tiç (prjolv, tire u> r —Ibid. 

§ Orx f xcptt'ysi T>1 utj ovx ItcovbISlOtov tivai , ov$i 

av 6 nàç ojftog avro tnaiviotj -— Ibid. p. 386, 387. 


68 


XX. After having heard the wisdom of 
the Gentiles , it will not be useless to listen 
further to Christian Philosophy. 

“ It were indeed desirable for us,” says one of 
the most eloquent of the Greek fathers, “ never 
to have required the aid of the written word, 
hut to have had the Divine precepts written 
only in our hearts, by grace, as they are 
written with ink in our books ; but since we 
have lost this grace by our own fault, let us 
then, as it is necessary, seize a plank instead 
of the vessel , without however forgetting the 
pre-eminence of the first state. God never 
revealed any thing in writing to the elect of 
the Old Testament : He always spoke to them 
directly, because He saw the purity of their 
hearts ; but the Hebrew people having fallen 
into the very abyss of wickedness, books and 
laws became necessary. The same proceeding 
is repeated under the empire of the New Reve¬ 
lation ; for Christ did not leave a single writing 


69 


to his Apostles. Instead of books, he promised 
to them the Holy Spirit : It is He, saith our 
Lord to them, who shall teach you what you 
shall speak. But because, in process of time, 
sinful men rebelled against the faith and 
against morality, it was necessary to have re¬ 
course to books.” * 


* St. Chrysost. Horn, in Matth. I, h 

[“ Lycurgus would never reduce his laws tb writing ; 
for he thought that the most material points, and such as 
most directly tended to the public welfare, being imprinted 
on the hearts of their youth by a good education, and, by a 
constant and habitual observance of them, becoming a 
second nature, would supply the place of law and a law¬ 
giver in them all the rest of their lives. Plato , 

Diogenes, Zeno , and Chrysippus , who have written well on 
politics, took Lycurgus for their model, as appears by their 
writings : but these great men left only vain projects , in 
writing and words , behind them ; whereas Lycurgus, 
without writing any thing , did actually produce a real gov¬ 
ernment, which had never been thought of before him ; 
.and the city of Lacedaemon continued, both in re¬ 
spect of good government at home and reputation abroad, 
for the space of five hundred years, mainly by their strict 

observance of Lycurgus’s laws ;.and he deserves 

the preference before all other statesmen of Greece, be- 





70 




XXL The whole truth is found united in 
these two authorities. They show the profound 
imbecility (it is certainly permissible to speak 
like Plato, who never loses his temper,) the 
profound imbecility, I say, of those poor men 
who imagine that lawgivers are men,* that 

cause he put that in practice of which they only had the 
idea.”—See Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus. 

Plutarch in his Life of Numa, says, “But he (Numa) 
having in his life time perfectly taught the priests all that 
he had written, and habituated them to a perfect skill and 
practice of every particular, commanded that the sacred 
books, which he had written in the same manner as some 
legislators among the Greeks wrote their tables of laws, 
should be buried with his body, as if he thought such 
secret mysteries could not be kept and conveyed with suffi¬ 
cient respect in lifeless writings. For this very reason, 
they say, the Pythagoreans would not commit their pre¬ 
cepts [or constitutions] to writing, but imprinted them upon 
the memory, and by way of unwritten instruction, to such 
as were worthy to receive them.” 

Such passages as these justify the commendation of Plu¬ 
tarch found in another work of our author. “ There is not 
a single idea , sound in morals and politics , which has es¬ 
caped the good sense of Plutarch .”—Trans.] 

* Among a multitude of admirable passages with which 
the Psalms of David sparkle, I distinguish the following : 


71 


laws are a piece of paper, and that nations may 
be constituted with ink. They show, on the 
contrary, that scripture is invariably a sign of 
weakness, ignorance, or danger ; that in propor¬ 
tion as an institution is perfect, it writes less ; 
so that what is truly divine, has nothing at all 
written for its establishment ; in order to make 
us feel that all written law is only a necessary 
evil, engendered by infirmity or human malice ; 
and that it is of no authority whatever, unless 
it has received a previous, unwritten sanction. 

XXII. We cannot but lament here over 
the fundamental fallacy of a system which has 
so unhappily divided Europe. The partizans of 
this system have said, We believe only in the 
Word of God. What abuse of words ! what a 
strange and melancholy ignorance of Divine 

“ Constitue Domine legislatorem super eos, ut sciant Genies 
quoniam homines sunt; that is to say,—Appoint, 0 Lord, 
a lawgiver over them, that the nations may know them¬ 
selves to be but men. It is a beautiful sentence. 


72 


things ! We alone believe in the Word , whilst 
our dear enemies are obstinately resolved to 
believe only in scripture ; as if God could or 
would change the nature of things of which 
He is the Author, and impart to scripture the 
life and efficacy which it has not ! The Holy 
Scripture — is it not then a writing ? Has it 
not been traced with a pen and a little black 
liquid ? Does it know what it is needful to 
say to one man , and what to withhold from 
another ? * Did not Leibnitz and his maid 
servant read in it the same words ? Can this 
Scripture be any thing else than the image 
of the Word ? And though infinitely vener¬ 
able in this respect, if we should interrogate 
it, must it not keep a divine silence?^ If it 
should be attacked or insulted, can it defend 
itself in the absence of its Author ? Glory to 
the truth ! If the Word , eternally living, does 

* Vide page 66, et suiv. 

t Ztuvàiç nùvv oiyy .—Plat, in Phcedr. Opp. tom. x. Edit, 
b'ipont. p. 382. 


73 


not quicken the scripture, it will never become 
the word , that is to say, the life. Let others in¬ 
voke then, as much as they please, the silent 
word ; we will smile peacefully at this false 
god; always expecting, with a tender impatience 
the moment when its partisans, undeceived, 
will throw themselves into our arms, opened 
to embrace them for three centuries past. 

XXIII. Every right mind will convince 
itself on this point, by a little reflection upon 
an axiom equally.striking by its importance 
and by its universality. It is this, that no¬ 
thing GREAT HAS GREAT BEGINNINGS. There 

will not be found in the history of all ages a 
single exception to this law. Cresdt occulto 
velut arbor œvo , is the immortal device of 
every great institution ; and hence it is, that 
every false institution writes much, because it 
feels its weakness, and seeks support. From 

the truth just expressed, follows the unalterable 
6 


74 


consequence, that no institution, truly great 
and real, could be founded on a written law, 
since the men themselves, the successive in¬ 
struments of its establishment, know not 
what it will become, and since insensible 
growth is the true sign of durability, in every 
possible order of things. A remarkable ex¬ 
ample of this kind, may be found in the power 
of the sovereign Pontiffs, which I do not 
intend to consider here in a dogmatic way. 
A multitude of able writers, since the sixteenth 
century, have employed a prodigious amount 
of learning, in order to establish, by going 
back to the cradle of Christianity, that the 
Bishops of Rome were not, in the 'first cen¬ 
turies, what they afterwards became ; thus 
supposing, as a point conceded, that every thing 
which is not found in primitive times, is an 
abuse. Now I say, without the least spirit of 
contention, and without the design of offend¬ 
ing any body, they manifest in this as much 


75 


philosophy and true knowledge, as they would 
do in seeking, in an infant in swaddling clothes, 
the true dimensions of a full-grown man. 
The sovereignty, of which I am speaking at 
this moment, was born like others, and has 
grown like others. It is lamentable to see 
excellent minds taking such immense pains, 
to prove by infancy that manhood is an abuse ; 
whilst any institution whatever, adult at birth, 
would be the grossest of absurdities, a true 
logical contradiction. If the enlightened and 
generous enemies of this power (and there are 
undoubtedly many of this class) will examine 
the question in this point of view, as I affec¬ 
tionately pray them to do, I do not doubt 
that all these objections, drawn from antiquity, 
will disappear as a light mist from before 
their eyes. 

Concerning abuses, I ought not to employ 
myself here. I will say, however, since I 
have already had occasion to refer to them, 


76 


that there is much to abate the declamatory 
invectives which the last century has com¬ 
pelled us to read on this great subject. A 
time will come, when the Popes, against whom 
the most clamour has been made, such as 
Gregory VII, for example, will be regarded, 
in every country, as the friends, guardians, 
and saviours of the human race,—as the true 
constitutive genuises of Europe.* 


*[The following passage, from a Protestant writer, taken 
in connection with the statement in the text, cannot be de¬ 
void of interest. Speaking of the extension of the Gospel 
before the 16th century, he says, “We must admit that 
the fact of such a power ” (that of the sovereign Pontiffs) 
“having been established, proves at least the prevalence 
of a conviction that Christianity was a system, that Christ¬ 
ians were a body, and that unity was a token of that body; 
—and further, a dispassionate judgement will conclude that 
such a power . . . became a channel of God’s providences to 
the world; that it was still the means whereby the idea of a 
spiritual rule on earth was tangibly impressed on minds which 
would have been unaffected by the purer and simpler garb 
which the Gospel wore in primitive ages ; that it did over- 
V come the cruelty and tyranny of monarchs, before which 
weaker and less compacted bodies might have fallen ; did 


77 


No person will doubt it, when learned 
Frenchmen shall be Christians, and when 
learned Englishmen shall be Catholics ; — 
which will yet come to pass. 

XXIV. But by what penetrating word 
can we at this moment make ourselves heard, 
by an age infatuated with Scripture, and 
at variance with the Word, to such a de¬ 
gree, as to believe that men can create consti¬ 
tutions, languages, and even sovereignties ?— 
by an age, for which all realities are dreams, 
and dreams realities ; which sees not even what 
is passing before its eyes ; which feasts itself 
upon books, and asks for the equivocal lessons 
of Thucydides or Livy, altogether shutting 
their eyes to the truth which beams in the 
gazettes of the times ? 


frequently check the career of guilty power, and uphold the 
cause of justice and of virtue.”—Grant’s Bampton Lectures, 
1843. Lect. iv. London. Trans.] 


78 


If the desires of a mere mortal were worthy 
of obtaining of Divine Providence one of those 
memorable decrees which constitute the grand 
epochs of history, I would ask Him to inspire 
some powerful nation, which had grievously 
offended Him, with the proud thought of 
constituting itself politically, beginning at the 
foundations. And if, notwithstanding my 
unworthiness, the primitive familiarity of one 
of the Patriarchs were permitted to me, 
I would say, “ Grant to this people every 
thing ! Give to her genius, knowledge, 
riches, consideration, especially an unbounded 
confidence in herself, and that temper, at 
once pliant and enterprising, which nothing 
can embarrass, nothing intimidate. Extin¬ 
guish her old government ; take away from 
her memory ; destroy her affections ; spread 
terror around her ; blind or paralyze her 
enemies ; give victory charge to watch at 
once over all her frontiers, so that none 


79 


of her neighbours could meddle in her 
affairs, or disturb her in her operations. 
Let this nation be illustrious in science, 
rich in philosophy, intoxicated with human 
power, free from all prejudice, from every tie, 
and from all superior influence ; bestow upon 
her every thing she shall desire, lest at some 
time she might say, this was wanting , or 
that restrained me : let her, in short, act 
freely with this immensity of means, that at 
length she may become, under Thy inexorable 
protection, an eternal lesson to the human 
race.” 

XXV. We cannot, it is true, expect a 
combination of circumstances which would 
constitute literally a miracle ; but events of 
the same order, though less remarkable, have 
manifested themselves here and there in his¬ 
tory, even in the history of our days ; and, 
though they may not possess, for the purpose 


80 


of example, that ideal force which I desired 
just now, they contain not less of memorable 
instruction. 

We have been witnesses, within the last 
twenty-five years, of a solemn attempt made 
for the regeneration of a great nation mortally 
sick. It was the first experiment in the -great 
work, and the preface , if I may be allowed to 
express myself thus, of the frightful book 
which we have been since called upon to read. 
Every precaution was taken. The wise men 
of the country believed it their duty to consult 
the modern divinity, in her foreign sanctuary. 
They wrote to Delphi, and two famous pon¬ 
tiffs answered in due form.* The oracles 
which they pronounced, on this occasion, were 
not, as in olden times, light leaves, the sport 
of the breezes ; they were bound : 

.Quidque hæc sapientia possit, 

Tunc patuit. 


* Rousseau and Mably. 




81 


It is but just, however, to acknowledge, that 
in whatever the nation was indebted merely to 
its own good sense, there were many things 
which excite our admiration at this day. Every 
qualification was, doubtless, united on the head 
of the wise and august person called to take the 
reins of government ; the chief men interested 
in maintaining the ancient laws, voluntarily 
made a noble sacrifice to the public ; and in 
order to fortify the supreme authority, they 
lent themselves to change an epithet of the 
sovereignty.—Alas ! all human wisdom was 
at fault, and all ended in death.* 


* [The following condensed statement, from an authentic 
source, respecting the times referred to in the text, may 
help us to apprehend it more clearly. 

“The National Assembly of France were engaged in 
framing their celebrated declaration of the Rights of Man , 
which was to form the basis of the new constitution, when 
the whole nation was agitated by suspicion and alarm from 
the accounts, received from all quarters, of the state of 
anarchy into which the kingdom was falling, obliging 
them suddenly to turn their attention to objects of practi¬ 
cal necessity; thus anticipating, in a sudden and unexpected 




82 


XXVI. But , it will be said, we know 

the causes which prevented the success of 


manner, the changes which the new constitution was in¬ 
tended to confirm. The privileged orders found themselves 
become the objects of universal jealousy and hatred; and 
that something must instantly be done to save their families 
and property, which were menaced, on every side, with per¬ 
secution and pillage. Regarding the popular torrent as 
now become irresistible ; to save something, they resolved 
to sacrifice a part. On the afternoon sitting of the fourth of 
August, 1789, the Viscount de Noailles, seconded by the 
Due d’Aiguillon, opened one of the most important scenes 
in the French Revolution, or in the history of any country. 
These noblemen stated, that the true cause of the commo¬ 
tions which convulsed the kingdom existed in the misery of 
the people, who groaned under the double oppression of 
public contributions and of feudal services. * For three 
months, (said M. de Noailles,) the people have beheld us 
engaged in verbal disputes, while their own attention and 
their wishes are only directed to things. What is the con¬ 
sequence ? They are armed to reclaim their rights, and 
they see no prospect of obtaining them but by force.* He 
therefore proposed to do justice, as the shortest way of 
restoring tranquillity ; and, for that purpose, to decree, that 
henceforth every tax should be imposed in proportion to the 
wealth of the contributors, and that no order of the state 
should be exempted from the payment of public burdens; 
that feudal claims should be redeemed at a fair valua¬ 
tion; but that such as consisted of personal services on 
the part of the vassal, should be abolished without compen- 


83 


that enterprise. How then? Do you wish 
that God should send angels under human 


sation, as contrary to the imprescriptible rights of man. 
The extensive possessions of the noblemen who made these 
proposals, added much lustre to the disinterested sacrifice 
which they offered. Their speeches were received with 
the most enthusiastic applauses, by the Assembly and by the 
galleries, and their proposals were decreed by acclamation, 
without a vote. The patriotic contagion now spread fast 
through every heart, and a contest of generosity ensued. 
The hereditary jurisdictions possessed by the nobles with¬ 
in their own territories, were next sacrificed. All places 
and pensions granted by the Court were suppressed, un¬ 
less granted as the reward of merit or of actual services. 
The game laws, which were supposed to be severe griev¬ 
ances to the peasantry, were renounced, with many other 
exclusive rights. The sale of offices was abolished, and 
the rights of casual emoluments, and of plurality of bene¬ 
fices, were relinquished by the clergy. The deputies of the 
Pais d’ Etat, or privileged provinces, with the deputies of 
Dauphiné at their head, next came forward, and offered a 
surrender of their ancient privileges, requesting that the 
kingdom might no longer remain parcelled out among 
Dauphinais, Bretons, Provençaux, &c., but that they 
should all form one great mass of French Citizens. They 
were followed by the representatives of Paris, Marseilles, 
Lyons, Bourdeaux, Strasbourg, &.c., who requested leave to 
renounce all their separate privileges as incorporations, for 
the sake of placing every man and every village in the 
nation upon a footing of equality. Thus the Assembly pro- 


84 


guises commissioned to destroy a constitution ? 
It will always be necessary to employ second 


ceeded, till every member had exhausted his imagination 
upon the subject of reform. To close the whole, the Due 
de Liancourt proposed that a solemn Te Deum should be 
performed, that a medal should be struck in commemora¬ 
tion of the events of that night; and that the title of 
Restorer of Gallic Liberty should be bestowed 
upon the reigning monarch. A deputation was accordingly 
appointed, to wait upon the King, respectfully to inform 
him of these decrees. 

“Several succeeding days were necessary to form into laws 
the decrees of the fourth of August, and committees were 
appointed to make out reports for that purpose. Soon after 
this, the King gave his sanction to the important decrees, 
but not without some hesitation, and expressing doubts of 
the wisdom of many of them in a letter to the Assembly. 
At the same time, the inviolability of the person of the 
Monarch was decreed, the indivisibility of the throne, and 
its hereditary descent from male to male in the reigning 
family.” 

The proceedings of this night changed entirely the 
political condition of France. It was probably the greatest 
moral shock the world has ever known, and was followed 
by consequences proportionably disastrous. The clergy, 
the Nobles, and the King, though possessing their former 
titles and nominal dignity, were now at the mercy of the 
Commons, who speedily dismissed them at their pleasure. 
We will only add one passage, from Alison, in reference to 
these precipitate measures. 


85 


causes ; this or that, what does it signify ? 
Every instrument is good in the hands of the 
great Artificer ; but such is the blindness of men, 
that if, to-morrow, some constitution-monger 
should come to organize a people, and to give 
them a constitution made with a little black 
liquid , the multitude would again hasten to 
believe in the miracle announced. It would be 
said, again, nothing is wanting ; all is fore¬ 
seen, all is written ; whilst, precisely because 
all could be foreseen, discussed, and written, 
it would be demonstrated, that the constitution 
is a nullity, and presents to the eye merely an 
ephemeral appearance.* 

“When rights, which had withstood the tyranny of 
Richelieu and Lauvois were renounced, all the monuments 
of freedom which the patriotism of former times had 
erected, were swept away ; and the liberty, erected in its 
stead, was founded on an imaginary and inexperienced basis. 
Those whom you hope to disarm by concessions, are only 
led, by them, to still bolder attempts, and more extravagant 
demands.”—Trans.] 

♦[Modern Philosophy is altogether too material and too 
presumptuous, to perceive the true jurisdiction of the politi- 


86 




XXVII. I believe I have read, somewhere, 
that there are few sovereignties in a condition 
to vindicate the legitimacy of their origin. 
Admitting the reasonableness of the assertion, 
there will not result from it the least stain to 
the successors of a chief, whose acts might 
be liable to some objections ; the cloud, which 
might conceal from view, more or less, the 
origin of his authority, would be only a dis¬ 
cal world. One of its Follies, is that of believing that an 
assembly can constitute a nation ; that a constitution , that 
is to say, the ensemble of fundamental laws which are suited 
for a nation, and which give to it some definite form 
of government, is a performance, like another, which re¬ 
quires intelligence, knowledge, and practice ; that one 
may learn his trade of constituting ; and that men, at the 
moment they imagine the necessity of it, can say to other 
men, make us a government , just as is said to an artisan, 
make us a fire engine, or a stocking loom. 

Yet it is a truth, as certain, in its kind, as a mathemati¬ 
cal proposition, that no great institution results from 
deliberation , and that human works are fragile, in propor¬ 
tion to the number of men who engage in them, and to 
the amount of science and reasoning à priori , employed 
about them.—Considerations sur la France, p. 112, A Lyon, 
1834. Trans.] 


87 


advantage, — a necessary consequence of a 
law of the moral world. If it were other¬ 
wise, it would follow, that the sovereign could 
not reign legitimately, except by virtue of a 
deliberation of all the people, that is to say, * 
by the grace of the people ; which will never 
happen : for there is nothing so true, as that 
which was said by the author of the Con - 
sidérations on France,—that the people will 
always accept their masters , and will never 
choose them. It is necessary that the origin 
of sovereignty should manifest itself from 
beyond the sphere of human power ; so that 
men, who may appear to have a direct hand in 
it, may be, nevertheless, only the circum¬ 
stances. As to legitimacy, if it should seem in 
its origin to be obscure, God explains Himself, 
by His prime-minister in the department of 
this world, —Time. It is true, nevertheless, 
that certain contemporary signs are not to be 
mistaken, when we are in a condition to 


88 



observe them ; but the details, on this point, 
belong to another work.* 

* [This principle is so beautifully illustrated in the work re¬ 
ferred to, that we cannot refrain from introducing the entire 
• passage. Speaking of the manner in which counter-revolu¬ 
tions are effected, having the case of France particularly 
in view, the author proceeds to say, “ En politique, 
comme en mécanique, les théories trompent, si l’on ne 
prend en considération les différentes qualités des matériaux 
qui forment les machines. Au premier coup-d’œil, par ex¬ 
ample, cette proposition paraît vraie : Le consentement 
préalable des Français est nécessaire au rétablissement de 
la Monarchie. Cependant rien n’est plus faux. Sortons 
des théories, et représentons nous des faits. 

Un courrier arrivé à Bordeaux, à Nantes, à Lyon, etc., 
apporte la nouvelle que le Roi est reconnu à Paris ; qu'une 
faction quelconque (qu’on nomme ou qu’on ne nomme pas) 
s'est emparée de l'autorité, et a déclaré qu'elle ne la possède 
qu'au nom du Roi, qu'on a dépêché un courrier au Souver¬ 
ain, qui est attendu incessamment, et que de toutes parts 
on arbore la cocarde blanche. La renommée s’empare de 
ces nouvelles, et les charge de mille circonstances impo¬ 
santes. Que fera-t-on ? Pour donner plus beau jeu à la 
République, je lui accorde la majorité, et même un corps 
de troupes républicaines. Ces troupes prendront, peut- 
être, dans le premier moment, une attitude mutine ; mais 
ce jour-là même elles voudront dîner, et commenceront à 
se détacher de la puissance qui ne paie plus. Chaque offi¬ 
cier qui ne jouit d’aucune considération, et qui le sent très- 
bien, quoi qu’on en dise, voit tout aussi clairement, que le 


89 


XXVIII. Every thing brings us back to 
the general rule, — man cannot create a con - 


premier qui criera : vive le JRot, sera un grand personnage : 
l’amour-propre lui dessine, d’un crayon séduisant, l’image 
d’un général des armées de Sa Majesté Très-Chrétienne, bril¬ 
lant de signes honorifiques, et regardant du haut de sa gran¬ 
deur ces hommes qui le mandaient naguères à la barre de 
la municipalité. Ces idées sont si simples, si naturelles, qu’el¬ 
les ne peuvent échappera personne : chaque officier le sent ; 
d’où il suit qu’ils sont tous suspects les uns pour les autres. 
La crainte et la défiance produisent la délibération et la 
froideur. Le soldat, qui n’est pas électrisé par son officier, 
est encore plus découragé : le lien de la discipline reçoit ce 
coup inexplicable, ce coup magique qui le relâche subite¬ 
ment. L’un tourne les yeux vers le payeur royal qui 
s’avance ; l’autre profite de l’instant pour rejoindre sa 
famille : on ne sait ni commander ni obéir ; il n’y a plus 
d’ensemble. 

C’est bien autre chose parmi les citadins : on va, on 
vient, on se heurte, on s’interroge : chacun redoute celui 
dont il aurait besoin ; le doute consume les heures, et les 
minutes sont décisives : partout l’audace rencontre la pru-^ 
dence ; le vieillard manque de détermination, et le jeune 
homme de conseil : d’un côté sont des périls terribles, de 
l’autre une amnistie certaine et des grâces probables. Où 
sont d’ailleurs les moyens de résister ? où sont les chefs? à 
qui se fier? Il n’y a pas de danger dans le repos, et le 
moindre mouvement peut être une faute irrémissible : il 
faut donc attendre. On attend ; mais le lendemain on 


7 


90 


stitution ; and no legitimate constitution can 
be written. The collection of fundamental 

reçoit l’avis qu’une telle ville de guerre a ouvert ses por¬ 
tes \ raison de plus pour ne rien précipiter. Bientôt on 
apprend que la nouvelle était fausse ; mais deux autres 
villes qui l’ont crue vraie, ont donné l’exemple, en croyant 
le recevoir, elles viennent de se soumettre, et déterminent 
la première, qui n’y songeait pas. Le gouverneur de cette 

place a présenté au Roi les clefs sa bonne ville de . 

C’est le premier officier qui a eu l’honneur de le recevoir 
dans une citadelle de son royaume. Le Roi l’a créé, sur 
la porte, maréchal de France ; un brevet immortel a 
couvert son écusson de fleurs de lis sans nombre ; son nom 
est à jamais le plus beau de la France. A chaque minute, 
le mouvement royaliste se renforce ; bientôt il devient 
irrésistible, vive le Roi! s’écrient l’amour et la fidélité, 
au comble de la joie : vive le Roi ! répond l’hypo¬ 
crite républicain, au comble de la terreur. Qu’ importe ? 
il n’y a qu’ un cri.-Et le Roi est sacré. 

Citoyens ! voilà comment se font les contre-révolutions. 
Dieu . s'étant réservé la formation des souverainetés , nous 
en avertit en ne confiant jamais à la multitude le choix de 
ses maîtres. Il ne l'emploie, dans ces grands mouvemens 
qui décident le sort des Empires , que comme un instrument 
passif. Jamais elle n'obtient ce qu'elle veut : toujours elle 
accepte , jamais elle ne choisit , On peut même remarquer 
une affectation de la Providence (qu’on me permette cette 
expression), c’est que les efforts du peuple pour atteindre 
un objet, sont précisément le moyen qu’elle emploie 
pour l’en éloigner. Ainsi, le peuple Romain se donna des 
maîtres en croyant combattre l’aristocratie à la suite de 




91 


laws, which must essentially constitute a civil 
or religious society, never has been written, 

César. C’est l’image de toutes les insurrections populaires. 
Dans la révolution française, le peuple a constamment été 
enchaîné, outragé, ruiné, mutilé par toutes les factions ; 
et les factions, à leur tour, jouet les unes des autres, ont 
constamment dérivé, malgré tous leurs efforts, pour se 
briser enfin sur l’écueil qui les attendait. 

Que si l’on veut savoir le résultat probable de la révolu¬ 
tion française, il suffit d’examiner en quoi toutes les 
factions se sont rénuies : toutes ont voulu l’avilissement, 
la destruction meme du Christianisme universel et de la 
Monarchie ; d'où il suit que tous leurs efforts n’aboutiront 
qu’ à l’exaltation du Christianisme et de la Monarchie.”— 
Considérations sur la France, Chap. ix. p. 157—161. A 
Lyon, 1834. 

Burke, in remarking on Dr. Price’s doctrine, “that His 
Majesty of England, was almost the only lawful king in the 
world, because the only one who owes his crown to the 
choice of the people ,” says, “ that it is either nonsense, or 
it affirms a most unfounded, dangerous, illegal, and uncon¬ 
stitutional position. If ever there was a time, favourable 
for establishing the principle, that a King of popular choice 
was the only legal King, without all doubt it was at the 
Revolution of 1688. Its not being done at that time, is 
a proof that the nation was of opinion, it ought not to 
be done at any time ; and their accepting King William, 
was not properly a choice : — but to all those who did not 
wish to recall King James, it was an act of necessity , in 
the strictest moral sense in w-hich necessity can be taken ; 


92 


and never will be, à priori. It is only when 
society finds itself already constituted, with¬ 
out being able to say how, that it is possible 
to make known, or explain, in writing, certain 
special articles ; but in almost every case 
these declarations or explanations are the 


and though Parliament departed from the strict order of 
inheritance, in favour of a Prince who was very near in 
the line of succession, yet all that could be found in this 
act of necessity, to countenance the idea of an hereditary 
succession, is brought forward, and fostered, and made the 
most of, w’hilst a politic, well-wrought veil was thrown 
over every circumstance tending to weaken the rights, 
which in the meliorated order of succession they meant 
to perpetuate. They declare that they consider it as a 
marvellous providence, and merciful goodness of God to 
this Nation, to preserve their Majesties’ Roxjal Persons, 
most happily to reign over us on the throne of their an¬ 
cestors, for which, from the bottom of their hearts, they 
return their humblest thanks and praises.”—See Works of 
Edmund Burke, vol. Ill, pp. 30-34, Boston, 1826. 

We have extended this note beyond the point of illustra¬ 
tion, for which it was introduced, in order that it might be 
seen, in this connection, how much care was had to per¬ 
petuate the hereditary succession , a thing of the highest 
importance in a monarchy, and to which every other 
consideration ought to yield.—Trans.] 


93 


effect or cause of very great evils, and always 
cost the people more than they are worth. 

XXIX. To this general rule, that no 
constitution can be made or written , à priori , 
we know of but one single exception; that 
is, the legislation of Moses. This alone was 
cast , so to speak, like a statue, and written 
out, even to its minutest details, by a wonder¬ 
ful man, who said, Fiat Î without his work 
ever having need of being corrected, improved, 
or in any way modified, by himself or others. 
This, alone, has set time at defiance, because 
it owed nothing to time, and expected nothing 
from it ; this alone has lived fifteen hundred 
years ; and even after eighteen new centuries 
have passed over it, since the great anathema 
which smote it on the fated day, we see it, 
enjoying, if I may say so, a second life, 
binding still, by I know not what mysterious 
bond, which has no human name, the differ- 


94 


ent families of a people, which remain dis¬ 
persed without being disunited. So that, like 
attraction, and by the same power, it acts at 
a distance, and makes one whole, of many 
parts widely separated from each other. Thus, 
this legislation lies evidently, for every in¬ 
telligent conscience, beyond the circle traced 
around human power ; and this magnificent 
exception to a general law, which has only 
yielded once, and yielded only to its Author, 
alone demonstrates the Divine mission of the 
great Hebrew Lawgiver, much better than the 
entire work of that English Prelate, who, 
with the strongest powers of mind, and an 
immense erudition, has nevertheless had the 
misfortune to support a great truth by a mis¬ 
erable fallacy. 

XXX. But, since every constitution is 
divine in its principle, it follows, that man 
can do nothing in this way, unless he reposes 


95 


himself upon God, whose instrument he then 
becomes.* Now, this is a truth, to which the 
whole human race in a body have ever ren¬ 
dered the most signal testimony. Examine 
history, which is experimental politics, and 
we shall there invariably find the cradle of 
nations surrounded by priests, and the Divinity 
constantly invoked to the aid of human weak¬ 
ness.! Fable, much more true than ancient 


* We may even generalize the assertion, and pronounce, 
without exception, that no institution, whatever , can endure, 
if it is not founded on religion. 

t Plato, in an admirable fragment, wholly Mosaic, speaks 
of a primitive time, when God had confided the establish¬ 
ment and the administration of empires , not to men , but 
to genii ; then he adds, in speaking of the difficulty of 
creating durable constitutions, the truth is, that if God 
does not preside at the establishment of a city , and it 
should have only a human beginning , it could not escape the 
greatest evils. We must endeavour, then, by every imagin¬ 
able means, to imitate the primitive regimen ; and trusting 
ourselves in that which is immortal in man, we ought to 
found houses as well as states, by holding sacred as law the 
will of the (supreme) intelligence. If a state (whatever 
may be its form) is founded on vice, and governed by a 
people who trample justice under foot, there remains for it 


96 


history, for eyes prepared, comes in to strength¬ 
en the demonstration. It is always an oracle, 
which founds cities ; it is always an oracle, 
which announces the Divine protection, and 
successes of the heroic founder. Kings, 
especially, the chiefs of rising empires, are 
constantly designated, and, as it were, marked , 
by Heaven, in some extraordinary manner.* 
How many thoughtless men have ridiculed 
the Saint-Ampoule , [holy oil ,] without ever 
dreaming that the Saint-Ampoule is a hie¬ 
roglyph, and that it is only necessary to 
understand it.f 


no means of safety (0> ? x "on owTtjQiaç pyj/avi,). Plat, de 
Leg., tom. VIII., edit. Bip. pag. 180,181. 

* Great use has been made in controversy of the famous 
rule of Richard de Saint-Victor : Quod semper , quod ubique y 
quod ab omnibus. But this rule is general, and can, I think, 
be expressed thus: all belief constantly universal is true; 
and whenever , in separating from a belief some certain 
articles peculiar to different vations y there remains some¬ 
thing common to all, that residuum is a truth. 

t Every religion, by the very nature of things, puts forth 


97 


XXXI. The coronation of kings belongs 
to the same principle. Never was there a 
ceremony, or, to speak more correctly, a pro¬ 
fession of faith, more significant and more 
respectable. The finger of the Pontiff has 
always touched the brow of the rising sover¬ 
eignty. The numerous writers who have 
seen in these august rites only ambitious 
views, and even an express conspiracy of 
superstition and tyranny, have spoken against 
the truth, and most of them, even against 
their own consciences. This subject merits 
a thorough examination. Sometimes, sover¬ 
eigns have sought the coronation, and some¬ 
times, the coronation has sought the sovereign. 
Others have rejected the coronation, as being a 


a mythology, which resembles itself. That of the Christian 
religion is, for this reason, always chaste, always useful, 
and often sublime, while (by a peculiar privilege) it is not 
possible to confound it with the religion itself. So that no 
Christian myth can do harm, and often it merits the whole 
attention of the observer. 


98 


sign of dependence. We are acquainted with 
a sufficient number of facts, to enable us to 
form a correct judgement ; but it would be 
necessary to distinguish carefully the men, 
the times, the nations, and the forms of wor¬ 
ship. It is sufficient, here, to insist on the 
general and perpetual opinion, which in¬ 
vokes the Divine power at the constitution of 
empires. 


XXXII. The most famous nations of an¬ 
tiquity, especially the most serious and wise, 
such as the Egyptians, Etruscans, Lacedae¬ 
monians, and Romans, had precisely the most 
religious constitutions ; and the duration of 
empires has always been proportioned to the 
degree of influence which the religious prin¬ 
ciple had acquired in the political constitu¬ 
tion : the cities and nations most addicted to 
Divine worship , have always been the most 


99 


durable , and the most wise ; as the most 
religious ages have also ever been most dis¬ 
tinguished for genius * 

XXXIII. Never have nations been civi¬ 
lized, except by religion. No other known 
instrument has power over savage man. With¬ 
out recurring to antiquity, which is very 
decisive on this point, we see a sensible proof 
of it in America. For three centuries, we 
have been there with our laws, our arts, our 
sciences, our civilization, our commerce, and 
our luxuries ; what have we gained over the 
savage state ? Nothing. We destroy these 
unfortunate beings, with sword and brandy; 
we drive them gradually into the interior of 

* [ “ How is it, Aristodemus, thou rememberest, or re- 
markest not, — that the Kingdoms and Commonwealths, 
most renowned, as well for their wisdom as antiquity, are 
those whose piety and devotion hath been most observable?” 
Xenophon, Memor. Socr. I, IV, 16 . —Trans.] 


100 


the wilderness, until, at last, they disappear 
entirely, victims of our vices as well as cruel 
superiority. 

XXXIY. Has any philosopher ever thought 
of forsaking his country and its pleasures, to 
go into the forests of America in pursuit of 
savages, for the purpose of exciting in them 
disgust at the vices of barbarism, and giving 
them a moral system ? * They have indeed 
done better ; they have composed fine hooks 
to prove that the savage is man in his natural 
state , and that we could desire nothing better 
than to resemble him.f Condorcet has said, 


* Condorcet has promised us, it is true, that philosophers 
should take upon themselves, without intermission, the 
civilization and welfare of barbarous nations.—( Esquisse 
d'un Tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain. 
In-8o., p. 335.) We wait for them to begin. 

t [*• J. G. Rousseau a constamment pris le sauvage 
pour l’homme primitif, tandis qu’il n’est et ne peut être 
que le descendant d’un homme détaché du grande arbre 


101 


the missionaries have carried into Asia and 
America nothing but shameful superstitions* 

de la civilisation par une prevarication quelconque* mais 
d’un genre qui ne peut plus être répété, autant qu’il m’est 
permis d’en juger ; car je doute qu’il se forme de nouveaux 
sauvages. 

Par une suite de la même erreur on a pris les langues 
de ces sauvages pour des langues commencées, tandis 
qu’elles sont et ne peuvent être que des débris de 
langues antiques, ruinées , s’il est permis de s’exprimer 
ainsi, et dégradées comme les hommes qui les parlant. En 
effet, toute dégradation individuelle ou nationale est sur- 
le-ehamp annoncée par une dégradation rigoureusement 
proportionelle dans le langage. Comment l’homme pour¬ 
rait-il perdre une idée ou seulment la rectitude d’une idée 
sans perdre la parole ou la justesse de la parole qui l’ex¬ 
prime ; et comment au contraire pourrait-il penser ou 
plus ou mieux sans le manifester sur-le-champ par son lan¬ 
gage ? ”—Les Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg, tom. I Ch. II. 

“ The error of the modems has arisen from their sup¬ 
posing that the savage state was the original condition of 
men, and that the social or civilized state is the result of 
compact or experience ; whereas, on the contrary, it is this 
latter which presents the original condition of the human 
race, and what is termed the savage or natural state is the 
result of corruption and accident, which has destroyed the 
original and natural order of human society.”—Trans.] 

* Esquisse d’un Tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit 
humain. In-8o, p. 335. 


102 


Rousseau has said, with an extravagance of 
folly truly inconceivable, that the missionaries 
appeared to him scarcely more wise than the 
conquerors .* In fine, their Corypheus has 
had the face to cast the grossest ridicule (but 
what had he to lose ?) on those pacific 
conquerors whom antiquity would have 
deified.f 

XXXY. It is they, however, it is the 
missionaries, who have accomplished this 
wonder, so much above human power, or even 


* Lettre à l’archevêque de Paris. 

t Well ! my friends, why do you not remain in your 
country ? You would not have found more devils, but 
you would have found altogether as much folly. —Voltaire, 
Essai sur les Mœurs et l’Esprit, etc., introd. De la Magie. 

Seek elsewhere for more nonsense, more indecency, 
more bad taste ; you will not find it. It is however 
this book, of which very few chapters are exempt from 
similar passages, it is this showy gewgaw , that modern 
enthusiasts have not hesitated to call, a monument of the 
human mind: without doubt, like the chapel of Versailles, 
and the pictures of Boucher. 


103 


the human will. They, alone, have traversed 
the vast continent of America, from one ex¬ 
tremity to the other, in order to create there 
men. They, alone, have done what the civil 
power had not even dared to imagine. But 
nothing of this kind equals the missions of 
Paraguay: it is there we have seen, in a 
manner the most marked, the authority and 
exclusive power of religion for the civiliza¬ 
tion of man. This prodigy has been celebra¬ 
ted, but not sufficiently : the spirit of the 
eighteenth century, and another spirit its ac¬ 
complice, have possessed the power of stifling, 
in part, the voice of justice, and even that of 
admiration. At some future day, perhaps, (for 
we do hope that these great and generous 
labours will be resumed,) in the heart of an 
opulent city, founded on some old savannah , 
the father of these missionaries will have a 
statue. One may read on the pedestal : 


104 


TO THE CHRISTIAN OSIRIS, 

Whose envoys have traversed the earth , 
to pluck men from misery , 
from bruiishness , and ferocity , 
by teaching them agriculture , 
by giving them laws , 

èy teaching them the knowledge and service of God ; 
thus taming the hapless savage , 

NOT BY FORCE OF ARMS, 

of which they never had needy 
but by mild persuasion , and moral songs , 

AND THE POWER OF HYMNS, 

insomuch that they were thought to be angels.* 


* Osir is , reigning in Egypt , raised the Egyptians speedily 
from a needy, miserable , and savage life , ôi/ teaching them 
to sow and plant ; by giving them laws ; by instructing 
them to honour and revere the gods: and afterwards going 
through all the world , he reclaimed it, also , without employ¬ 
ing for this purpose any force of arms , but conciliating 
and gaining the greater part of the people by mild persua¬ 
sions and remonstrances , couched in songs and in every 
kind of music ( nti-doi xal A<jya/ just’ to’dt'jg nûarjç xai 
puaixfjç). The Greeks were of opinion that Osiris was 
Bacchus himself. — Plutarque, d'Isis et d'Osiris, edit, de 
Yascosan, tom. Ill, p. 287, in-8o. Edit. Henr. Steph., 
tom. I, p. 634, in-8o. 


105 


XXXVI. Now when we consider that that 
legislating Order, which ruled in Paraguay by 

There has been found lately , on an island in the Penob¬ 
scot river , a colony of savages , who still chant a great 
number of pious and instructive canticles in Indian 
to the music of the Church , with a precision that 
would hardly be found in the best constituted choirs ; 
one of the most beautiful airs in the Church in Boston 
came from these Indians , (who had learned it of their 
masters forty years before,) although from that time 
these unfortunate beings had enjoyed no kind of instruction. 
Mercure de France, 5 juillet 1806, No. 259, p. 29 et suiv. 

Father Salvaterra, (a beautiful name for a missionary !) 
justly called the Apostle of California , visited savages 
more intractable than any of whom we have ever had 
knowledge, without other arms than a lute upon which he 
played in a superior manner. He began to chant : In 
voi credo o Dio mio ! etc. Men and women collected in 
circles around him, and listened in silence. Muratori said, 
in speaking of this wonderful man, Pare favola quclla 
d'Orfeo ; ma chi sa che non sia succeduto in simil 
caso ? [This seems like the fable of Orpheus ; but who 
knows that he would not have succeeded in a similar case ?] 
The missionaries, alone, have understood and demonstra¬ 
ted the truth of that fable. We see, too, that they had 
discovered the kind of music worthy of being associated 
with these grand creations. “Send us,” they wrote to 
their friends in Europe, “ send us the airs of the great 
masters of Italy , per essere armoniosissimi , senza tanti 
imbrogli di violini obbligati , etc.,” [to be most harmo- 
8 


106 


the simple influence of virtue and talent, with¬ 
out deviating from the most humble submis¬ 
sion towards the legitimate authority, even 
the most misguided; that this order, I say, at 
the same time was braving in our prisons, in 
our hospitals, in our lazarettos, the most 
hideous and repulsive forms of misery, disease, 
and despair ; that these men, who ran, at the 
first call, to lie upon straw by the side of in¬ 
digence, had no outlandish airs in the most 
polished circles ; that they ascended the 
scaflold to speak the last words to the victims 
of human justice, and, from these scenes of 
horror, threw themselves into pulpits to thun¬ 
der before kings ; * that they held the pencil 
in China, the telescope in our observatories, 

nious without the complicated accompaniment of the 
violini obbligati.'] —Muratori, Cristianesimo felice, etc. 
Venezia, 1752,in-8o, chap. XII, p. 284. 

* Loquebar in testimoniis tuis in conspeciu Regum ; et 
non confundebar. Ps. cxvm, 46. This is the inscription 
placed under the portrait of Bourdaloue, and which many of 
his colleagues have merited. 


107 


the lyre of Orpheus in the midst of savages, 
and that they elevated the entire age of Louis 
XIV ; when, in short, we consider that a 
detestable coalition of perverse ministers, 
raving magistrates, and despicable sectaries, 
have been able, in our day, to destroy this 
admirable institution, and to applaud them¬ 
selves for the deed, we think we see that 
madman, who placed his foot exultingly upon 
a watch, exclaiming, I will stop your noise . 
But what do I say ? A madman is not re¬ 
sponsible.* 

* [Those aspects of the Society of Jesus, which elicited 
this eulogy from our Author, have been freely conceded by 
the more impartial Protestant writers. The following, 
from the “ English Review,” is but a specimen of much of 
the same kind. 

“ What a strange Society it is, of which we can hardly 
believe the best, even while we admit its greater probability ! 

“ Whatever may have been the origin of the Jesuits’ pol¬ 
icy, it cannot be denied, that they fell while defending a 
glorious position, and fighting in a good cause. Their 
enemies, were the enemies of all religion and right, except 
where they were actuated by mere party rancour. Their 
friends, were the friends of all decency and virtue, and they 


108 


XXXVII. I have felt it proper to dwell 
principally on the formation of Empires, as 


had few supporters on any other grounds. On one side, 
were the infidel philosophers, the spiteful concubine, the 
unscrupulous minister, and the savage parliaments. On the 
other, were the pious queen, and the good old Stanislaus, 
the devout dauphin, and his quiet wife, all the princesses, 
and all the nobles of the court, who were not living a life of 
licentiousness and extravagance. However it might so have 
happened, it is certain that they were identified, at this 
time, with all the virtue that was left at Versailles. Nor 
had they altogether fallen from their high estate. It is 
true, they were relaxed in doctrine, ambitious in their views, 
unscrupulous in their means. It is true, that they now 
toiled less for the Church, than for the Order. But they 
still showed an imposing front to the world. They were still 
unmatched in wealth and wisdom. They had won the 
sovereignty of an empire, which, in many respects, put 
European kingdoms to shame. They had succeeded in 
what all other colonists, up to that time, had failed in 
doing, and up to this time have failed still. They had 
imparted civilization to savages. They had come in 
contact with the red-skinned race, and had not destroyed 
them. They had landed on their shores, and made them 
happier than they were before. They had taught them 
European virtues, and not taught them European vices.— 
Under their guidance, the Indians built cities, and amassed 
wealth, and increased and multiplied into a vast population. 
Has the London Missionary Society ever done more ? or the 
United States as much ? No doubt they overlooked the lead¬ 
ing principles of civil and religious liberty ; but a reflecting 


109 


being the most important object ; but all 
human institutions are subjected to the same 
rule, and all are equally null or dangerous, 


Wesleyan will admit, that popery and priestcraft are ele¬ 
ments of less immediate destructiveness than grooved rifles 
and gin, and that the Jesuits may be excused for introduc¬ 
ing submission where no other European had introduced 
any thing but the small-pox. The Order might well be an 
object of suspicion, of fear, or of avoidance ; but it must 
have necessarily commanded admiration and respect. If its 
purity was gone, its energy remained. For some purpose 
or other, its members were still making converts in every 
corner of the earth. They were still preaching in islands 
that none but Anson’s crew had ever heard of, and teaching 
in tongues that no philosopher could understand. To some 
end or other, they were still pressing onward with deter¬ 
mined will ; and their bearing would not be the less awful 
and impressive from the belief that even justice, or mercy, 
or truth, might oppose their progress in vain. 

“The sudden ruin of this powerful body is matter both 
for reflection and surprise. The combinations which 
destroyed them were all fortuitous. There was no deep 
strategy employed against them ; they fell from a series of 

accidents.No parties were more astounded at 

the catastrophe than the enemies of the Order. D’Alem¬ 
bert can scarcely believe in the reality of the occurrence, 
even while relating the circumstances. After all, says he, 
c'est un beau chapitre à ajouter a Vhistoire des grands 
évênemens par les petites causes .”—See English Review, No, 
hi, Oct. 1844.—Trans.] 



110 


unless they repose on the foundation of all 
existence. This principle being incontestable, 
what shall we think of a generation, which 
has cast all to the winds, even to the found¬ 
ations of the social edifice, by rendering 
education purely scientific ? It was impos¬ 
sible to be deceived in a manner more dread¬ 
ful ; for every system of education that does 
not rest upon religion, as its basis, will fall 
in a trice, or will only diffuse poison through 
the state ; religion being , as Bacon has well 
said, the aromatic which prevents science from 
becoming corrupt.* 

* [What shall be said in excuse for the man who could 
utter so profound a truth, and yet assign to physical sciences 
a precedence which belongs of right to theology, ethics, 
and politics. Bacon, indeed, has contradicted this truth, 
at every step of his philosophical speculations, in endea¬ 
vouring, by every possible means, to separate science from 
religion. 

“ L’esprit,” Malebranche has said, “ devient plus pur, 
plus lumineux, plus fort et plus étendu à proportion que 
s’augmente l’union qu’il a avec Dieu, parceque c’est elle 
qui fait toute sa perfection.—’’Recherche de la Vérité. 
Paris, 1721, in-4o. Préface p. vi.— Trans.] 


Ill 


XXXVIII. The question is frequently 
asked : why there is a school of theology 
attached to every University ? The answer 
is easy : It is, that the Universities may 
subsist, and that the instruction may not 
become corrupt. Originally, the Universities 
were only schools of theology, to which other 
faculties were joined, as subjects around their 
Queen. The edifice of public instruction, 
placed on such a foundation, has continued 
even to our day. Those who have subverted 
it among themselves, will repent it, in vain, 
for a long time to come. To burn a city, 
there is needed only a child or a madman ; 
but to rebuild it, architects, materials, work¬ 
men, money, and especially time, will be 
required. 

XXXIX. Those who are content to cor¬ 
rupt ancient institutions, while at the same 
time preserving the exterior forms, have done 


112 


as much evil to the human race. Already the 
influence of modern Universities on manners 
and the national mind, over a considerable 
portion of the continent of Europe, is perfectly 
well known.* The English Universities have 
preserved, in this respect, more reputation than 
the others, perhaps for the reason that the 
English know better how to be silent, or to 


* I will not allow myself to publish notions which are 
peculiar to me, however precious they may be ; but I believe 
that it is lawful for every one to reprint what has been 
printed, and make a German speak on Germany. A 
man whom no person will accuse of being infatuated with 
old ideas, thus expresses himself on the Universities of his 
Country. 

“All our German Universities, even the best, have need 

of great reform, in respect to morals. The best, 

even, are a gulf where innocence, health, and the future 
well being of a multitude of young people are irretrievably 
lost ; and from whence go out beings ruined in body and 

soul, more burdensome than useful to society, etc. 

Would that these pages might be a preservative for young 
people ! Would that they might read over the gate of our 
Universities : Young man ! it is here that many of thy 
equals have lost happiness with innocence. ”—M. Campe, 
Recueil de Voyages pour l’instruction de la jeunesse, in-12, 
tome II, p. 129. 



113 


praise themselves at the right moment : per¬ 
haps, also, because the public spirit, which has 
an extraordinary power in that Country, has 
been able to defend, better than elsewhere, 
these venerable schools from the general 
anathema. However, they must succumb, 
and from the bad heart of Gibbon, we have 
obtained certain strange disclosures on this 
point.* In short, not to go out of generalities, 
if we do not return to the old maxims, if 
education is not restored into the hands of 
priests, and if science is not every where 
placed in the second rank, the evils which 
await us are incalculable : we shall become 


* See his Memoirs, where, after having made some singu¬ 
lar revelations on the Universities of his Country, he says, 
in particular, on that of Oxford, she will as cheerfully 
renounce me for a son, as I am willing to disclaim her for 
a mother. I do not doubt that this tender mother, 
sensible as she ought to be, to such a declaration, may have 
ordained a magnificent epitaph for him : Lubens merito. 

Sir William Jones, in his letter to M. Anquetil, goes to 
the other extreme ; but this extreme does him honour. 


114 


brutalized by science, and this is the lowest 
degree of brutality.* 

XL. Not only does it not belong to man 
to create institutions, but it does not appear 
that his power, unassisted , extends even to 
change for the better institutions already 
established. If there is anything evident for 
man, it is the existence in the universe of two 
opposing forces, which are in continual con¬ 
flict. There is nothing good, that evil does 


* [“What has not been said, during the last century, 
against a religious education ? What has not been done 
to render science and even morality purely human ? The 
French, especially, struck the grand blow in 1763. The 
effect is known ; it was manifest, immediate, incontestable, 
and that epoch will forever be memorable in history.” 

Malebranche, indeed, has reason for saying, “ que les 
hommes peuvent regarder l’astronomie, la chimie et presque 
toutes les sciences comme les diverlissemens d’un honnête 
homme , mais qu’ils ne doivent pas se laisser surprendre à 
leur éclat, ni les préférer à la science de l’homme.” 
—Recherche de la Vérité. Paris, 1721 in-4o. Préface 
p. vi.— Trans.] 


115 


not sully or alter ; there is no evil, that 
goodness does not repress and attack, by 
impelling continually all existence towards a 
more perfect state.* These two forces are 
every where present : we behold them equally 
in the vegetation of plants, in the generation 
of animals, in the formation of languages, and 
of empires, (two things inseparable,) etc. 
Human power extends only perhaps to re¬ 
moving or combatting the evil, in order to 


* A Greek would have said : JTçôç InavoQ&waiv. We 
might say, towards restitution en entier ,—an expression 
which philosophy can very well borrow from jurisprudence, 
and which will enjoy, under this new acceptation, a won¬ 
derful fitness. As to the opposition and the balancing of 
the two forces, it is sufficient to open our eyes. Good is 

set against evil , and life against death . Consider 

all the works of the Most-High. Two and two , and one 
against another. —Eccles. xxxiii. 15. 

We may say, in passing, it is thence that arises the rule 
of the beau-idéal. Nothing in nature being what it ought 
to be, the true artist,—he who can say, est Deus in nobis, 
—has the mysterious power of discerning traits the least 
altered, and of assembling them, in order to form a whole 
which only exists in his understanding. 



116 


disengage the good, and restore to it the 
power of developing itself according to its 
nature. The celebrated Zanotti has said, It 
is difficult to alter things for the better.* This 
thought contains much sound sense, under the 
guise of extreme simplicity. It accords per¬ 
fectly with another thought of Origen, which 
is alone worth a volume. Nothing, says he, 
can be changed for the better among men, 
without Godf All men have a consciousness 
of this truth, without being in a state to ex¬ 
plain it to themselves. Hence that instinctive 
aversion, in every good mind, to innovations.^ 


* Difficile est mutare in melius. Zanotti, cited in the 
Transunto della R. Accademia di Torino. 1788—89, in-So. 

p. 6. 

t AQEEl : or, if we would express this thought in 
a manner more laconic, and disengaged of all grammatical 
licence, without God, nothing better. —Otig. adv. 
Cels. 1. 26. ed. Ruoei. Paris. 1733. In-fol., tom. p. I. 345. 

$ [“The science of constructing a commonwealth, or reno¬ 
vating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental 
science, not to be taught à priori. Nor is it a short experience 
that can instruct as in that practical scienee ; because the 


117 


The word reform , in itself, and previous to all 
examination, will be always suspected by 

real effects of moral causes are not always immediate ; but 
that which in the first instance is prejudicial may be 
excellent in its remoter operation ; and its excellence 
may arise even from the ill effects it produces in the 
beginning. The reverse also happens ; and very plausible 
schemes, with very pleasing commencements, have often 
shameful and lamentable conclusions. In states, there are 
often some obscure and almost latent causes, things which 
appear at first view of little moment, on which a very great 
part of its prosperity or adversity may most essentially 
depend. The science of government being therefore so 
practical in itself, and intended for such practical purposes, 
a matter which requires experience, and even more 
experience than any person can gain in his whole life, 
however sagacious and observing he may be, it is with 
infinite caution that any man ought to venture upon 
pulling down an edifice which has answered in any tolerable 
degree, for ages, the common purposes of society, or on 
building it up again, without having models and patterns of 
approved utility before his eyes.—’’See Works of Edm. 
Burke, vol. III. p. 79. Boston, 1826. 

“ History affords no example of an era, in which inno¬ 
vation was so hastily pursued, and ambition so blindly 
worshipped ; when the experience of ages was so haughtily 
rejected, and the fancies of the moment so rashly adopted; 
in which the rights of property were so scandalously 
violated, and the blood of the innocent so profusely 
lavished, as in the French Revolution. 


118 


wisdom, and the experience of every age 
justifies this sort of instinct. We know too 
well what has been the fruit of the most 
beautiful speculations of this kind.* 

XLI. To apply these general maxims to a 
particular case, it is from the single consider¬ 
ation of the extreme danger of innovations 
founded upon simple human theories, that, 

“ The great danger of setting the ideas of men afloat 
upon political subjects, consists in the multitude of men 
who can think, compared to the few who can think correct¬ 
ly ; in the rapidity with which the most stable institutions 
can be overturned, compared with the excessively slow 
rate at which they can be restored. Every man can speak 
of politics ; there is not one in ten who can understand 
them : every man flatters himself he knows something of 
history ; to be qualified to reason on it correctly, requires 
the incessant study of twenty years. But, unfortunately, 
the knowledge of the difficulty of the subject, and of the 
extensive information which it requires, is one of the last 
acquisitions of the human mind ; none are so rash as those 
who are least qualified to govern ; none so really worthy of 
the lead, as those who are least desirous to assume it.”— 
Alison’s Hist, of French Revolution, vol. I, chap. in. 
Lond. 1833.—Trans.] 

* JYihil motum ex antiquo probabile est. —Tit.-Liv. 
xxxiv, 53. 


110 


without believing myself to be in a state to 
have a decided opinion, in the way of reason¬ 
ing, upon the great question of parliamentary 
reform, which has agitated minds in England 
so powerfully, and for so long a time, I still 
find myself constrained to believe, that this 
idea is pernicious, and that if the English 
yield themselves too readily to it, they will 
have occasion to repent.* But , say the par- 


* [“ The danger of political innovations arises not from 
their immediate, but from their ultimate consequences ; not 
from those who originate, but those who follow them up. 
Changes once rashly commenced, cannot easily be stopped; 
the fever of innovation seizes the minds of the energetic 
part of mankind, and the prudent become unable to stem 
the torrent. The prospect of gain rouses the ambitious 
and the reckless ; they issue from obscurity to share the 
spoil, and in the struggle rapidly acquire an ascendency. 
They do so, because they are not restrained by the scru¬ 
ples which influence the good, nor by the apprehensions 
which paralyze the opulent. Having nothing to lose, they 
are indifferent as to the consequences of their actions ; 
having no principles, they accommodate themselves to those 
of the most numerous and least worthy of the people.”— 
Alison’s Hist, of French Revolution, vol. I, p. 194. Lond. 
1833.—Trans.] 


120 


tizans of reform, (for it is the grand argument,) 
the abuses are striking and incontestable : 
now can a formal abuse , a defect , be consti¬ 
tutional ? Yes, undoubtedly, it can be ; for 
every political constitution has its essential 
faults, which belong to its nature, and which 
it is impossible to separate from it ; and, that 
which should make all reformers tremble, is 
that these faults may be changed by circum¬ 
stances ; so that in showing that they are 
new, we cannot prove that they are not neces¬ 
sary.* What prudent man, then, will not 

* It is necessary , says one, to recur to the fundamental 
and primitive laws of the state, which an unjust custom has 
abolished ; and it is a game to lose all. Nothing will be 
just in this balance. Yet the people lend a ready ear to 
these discourses .—Pascal, Pensées, prem. part., art. vi. 
Paris, Renouard, 1803, p. 121, 122. 

No one could speak better ; but, see what man is ! 
The author of this observation, and his hideous sect, have 
not ceased playing this infallible game to lose all; and 
indeed the game has perfectly succeeded. Voltaire, 
besides, has spoken on this point like Pascal : “ It is a 

very vain idea , says he, a very ungrateful labour , to desire 
to trace back every thing to ancient usage , etc.” — Essai 


121 


shudder in putting his hand to the work? 
Social harmony, like musical concord, is sub¬ 
ject to the law of temperament in the general 
key. Adjust the fifths accurately, and the 
octaves will jar, and conversely. The disso¬ 
nance being then inevitable, instead of exclud¬ 
ing it, which is impossible, it must be qualified 
by distribution. Thus, on both sides, imper - 
fection is an element of possible perfection. 
In this proposition there is only the form of a 
paradox. But , it will perhaps still be said, 
where is the rule by which you may distin¬ 
guish the accidental defect , from that which 
belongs to the nature of things , and which 
it is impossible to exclude? — Men to whom 
nature has given only ears, ask questions of 
this kind ; and those who have an ear shrug 
their shoulders. 


sur les Mœurs et l’Esprit, etc., Chap. 85. Hear him 
afterwards speak of the Popes, you will see how he remem¬ 
bers his maxim. 

9 


122 


XLII. When it is a question of abuses in 
political institutions, it is necessary to take 
great care to judge of them only by their con¬ 
stant effects, and never by any of their causes, 
of whatever kind, which signify nothing still 
less by certain collateral inconveniences (if I 
may so express myself ) which men of limited 
views readily lay hold of, and are thus prevent¬ 
ed from seeing the whole together. Indeed, 
the cause, according to the hypothesis which 
seems to be proved, not having any logical 
relation to the effect ; and the inconveniences 
of an institution, good in itself, being only, as 
I have just said, an inevitable dissonance in 
the general key ; how can we judge of institu¬ 
tions by their causes and inconveniences ?— 
Yoltaire, who spoke of every thing, during an 
age, without having so much as penetrated be- 

* At least, with regard to the merit of the institution; 
for, under other points of view, it may be very important 
to employ one’s self with them. 


123 


low the surface,* has reasoned very humorous¬ 
ly on the sale of the offices of the magistracy 
which occurred in France ; and no instance, 
perhaps, could be more apposite to make us 
sensible of the truth of the theory which I am 
setting forth. That this sale is an abuse , says 
he, is proved by the fact , that it originated in 
another abuse. f Voltaire does not mistake here 
as every man is liable to mistake. He shame¬ 
fully mistakes. It is a total eclipse of common 
sense. Everything which springs from an 
abuse , an abuse ! On the contrary ; one of the 
most general and evident laws of this power, 
at once secret and striking, which acts and 
makes itself to be felt on every side, is, that the 


* Dante said to Virgil, in doing him, I must avow it, too 
much honour : Maestro di color che sanno [Master of those 
who know]. Parini, although he had his head absolutely 
turned, has, however, had the courage to say to Voltaire, 

in parodying Dante : Sei Maestro . di coloro che 

credon di sapere (II Mattino,) [Master of those who 
think they know]. The saying is very just, 
t Precis du siècle de Louis XV, chap. 42. 



124 


remedy of an abuse springs from an abuse, and 
that the evil, having reached a certain point, 
destroys itself, as it ought to do ; for evil, which 
is only a negation, has, for measure of dimen¬ 
sion and duration, that of the being to which 
it is joined, and which it destroys. It exists 
as an ulcer, which can only terminate in self- 
destruction. But then a new reality will 
necessarily occupy the place of that which has 
disappeared ; for nature abhors a vacuum , and 

the Good.But I diverge too far from 

Voltaire. 

XLIII. The error of this great writer pro¬ 
ceeds from the fact, that, divided between twenty 
sciences , as he himself somewhere confesses, 
and constantly occupied in communicating 
instruction to the world, he rarely gave himself 
time to think. “ A dissipated and voluptuous 
court, reduced to the greatest want by its foolish 
expenses, devises the sale of the offices of the 



125 


magistracy, and thus creates” (what it never 
could have done freely, and with a knowledge 
of the cause,) “it creates,” I say, “a rich 
magistracy, irremovable and independent ; so 
that the infinite power playing in the world * 
makes use of corruption for creating incorrupt¬ 
ible tribunals” (as far as human weakness 
permits).f There is nothing, indeed, so plaus¬ 
ible to the eye of a true philosopher ; nothing 
more conformable to great analogies, and to that 
incontestable law, which wills that the most 
important institutions should be the result not 
of deliberation, but of circumstances. J Here 


* Ludens in orbe terrarum.—Prov. viii, 31. 
t [The extract from Burke, contained in a note on page 
116, 117, may be referred to in this connection.—Trans.] 
t [“ But I cannot stand forward, and give praise or blame 
to any thing which relates to human actions, and human 
concerns, on a simple view of the object, as it stands 
stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude 
of metaphysical abstraction. Circumstances (which with 
some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every 
political principle its distinguishing colour, and discrimina¬ 
ting effect. The circumstances are what render every 


126 


is the problem almost solved when it is stated, 
as is the case with all problems. Could such 
a country as France be better judged than by 
hereditary magistrates ? If it is decided in 
the affirmative, which I suppose, it will be 
necessary for me at once to propose a second 
problem which is this : the magistracy being 
necessarily hereditary , is there , in order to con¬ 
stitute it at first , and afterwards to recruit it , 
a mode more advantageous than that which 
fills the coffers of the sovereign with millions at 
the lowest price , and which assures , at the same 
time , the opulence , independence , and even the 
nobility (of a certain sort) of the supreme 
judges? If we only consider venality as a means 
to the right of inheritance, every just mind 
is impressed with this, which is the true 
point of view. This is not the place to enter 

civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind. 
—See Works of Edm. Burke, vol. III., p. 24. Boston, 
1826.—Trans.] 


127 


fully into this question ; but enough has been 
said to prove that Voltaire has not so much 
as perceived it.* 

XLIV. Let us now suppose a man like him 
at the head of affairs, uniting, by a happy agree¬ 
ment, frivolousness, incapacity, and rashness : 
he will not fail to act in accordance with his 
foolish theories of laws and of abuses. He will 
borrow at six and two thirds per cent, to reim¬ 
burse his nominal incumbents, creditors at two 
per cent. : he will prepare minds by a multi¬ 
tude of paid writings, which will insult the 
magistracy and destroy public confidence in it. 
Soon Patronage, a thousand times more foolish 


* [Next to the Nobles, and as a privileged order, possess¬ 
ing a secondary kind of nobility of their own, were the 
parliaments. These were large bodies of men, in different 
provinces, appointed as courts of law for the administration 
of justice. In consequence of the corruption of the officers 
of State, the members purchased their places which they 
held for life ; but the son was usually preferred when he 
offered to purchase his father’s place.—Trans.] 


128 


than Chance, will open the long list of his blun¬ 
ders : the distinguished man, no longer perceiv¬ 
ing in the right of inheritance a counterpoise to 
oppressive labours, jvill withdraw himself, never 
to return ; and the great tribunals will be aban¬ 
doned to adventurers without name, without 
fortune, and without consideration ; instead of 
that venerable magistracy, in which virtue and 
science had become as hereditary as its dignities, 
—that true priesthood, which foreign nations 
might envy France, up to the moment when 
False Philosophy, having excluded Wisdom 
from all the places to which she was accus¬ 
tomed to resort, terminated such splendid 
achievements by driving her away from her 
own territory. 

XL V. Such is the natural picture of 
most reforms ; for, not only creation belongs 
not to man, hut reformation even, belongs 
to him only in a secondary way, and with a 
multitude of terrible restrictions. Starting from 


129 


these incontrovertible principles, each man can 
judge of the institutions of his country with a 
perfect certainty ; he can especially appreciate 
all those Creators , those Lawgivers , those 
Restorers of nations, so dear to the eighteenth 
century, and whom posterity will regard with 
pity, perhaps even with horror. Card castles 
have been built in Europe and out of Europe. 
The details would be odious ; but certainly we 
are not wanting in respect to any person in 
simply entreating men to consider and judge 
by the event, if they absolutely refuse every 
other kind of instruction. Man in relation 
with his Creator is sublime, and his action is 
creative : on the contrary, so soon as he 
separates himself from God, and acts alone, 
he does not cease to be powerful, for this is 
a privilege of his nature ; but his action is 
negative, and tends only to destroy. 

XLVI. There is not in the history of all ages 
a single fact which contradicts these maxims. 


130 


No human institution can endure unless sup¬ 
ported by the Hand which supports all ; that 
is to say, if it is not especially consecrated to 
Him at its origin. The more it is penetrated 
with the Divine principle, the more durable it 
will be. How strange is the blindness of men 
in our age ! They boast of their knowledge, 
and are ignorant of everything, since they are 
ignorant of themselves. They know not what 
they are, nor what they can do. An invincible 
pride bears them on continually to overthrow 
every thing which they have not made ; and 
in order to work out new creations, they 
separate themselves from the source of all 
existence. Jean-Jacques Roussseau has, how¬ 
ever, very well said, Little , vain man , show 
me thy power , and I will show thee thy weak¬ 
ness. It might be said, with as much truth and 
more profit, Little , vain man , confess to me thy 
weakness , and I will show thee thy strength. 
Indeed, as soon as man has acknowledged his 


131 


nothingness, he has taken a great step ; for he 
is very near seeking a support with which he 
can do all things. It is precisely the opposite 
to this, that has characterized the age which 
has just terminated. (Alas ! it has only ended 
in our almanacks. ) Examine all its enterprises, 
all its institutions, whatsoever, you will find it 
constantly intent upon separating them from 
the Divinity. Man has believed himself an 
independent being, and he has professed a true 
practical atheism, more dangerous, perhaps, 
and more culpable, than that of theory.* 

* [When we reflect upon the facts attested by entire 
history ; when we consider that, in the chain of human 
establishments, from those great institutions which consti¬ 
tute epochs in the world, even to the most inconsiderable 
social organizations,—from the Empire to the Brotherhood, 
—all have a divine basis, and that human power, whenever 
it is isolated, can only give to its productions a fictitious and 
transient existence ; what shall we think of the new French 
edifice, and of the power which has produced it? For my 
part, I never will believe in the fecundity of nothing. . . . 

“ Whenever a man brings himself, according to his 
powers, into close relation with the Creator, and produces 
any institution, whatsoever, in the name of the Divinity ; 


132 


XLVII. Withdrawn, by his vain sciences, 
from the single science which truly concerns 


whatever, in other respects, may be his individual weak¬ 
ness, his ignorance, his poverty, the obscurity of his birth, 
in a word, his absolute destitution of all human means, he 
partakes, in some way, of Omnipotency, of which he is 
made the instrument ; he produces works, the strength 
and duration of which astonish reason. 

**I entreat every reader to look attentively around him ; 
he will find, in the least objects, a demonstration of these 
great truths. It is not necessary to go back to the Sons of 
Ismael , to Lycurgus, to Numa, to Moses,—all of whose 
legislations were religious ; a popular fête, a rustic dance, 
suffices to the observer. He will witness, in some Protest¬ 
ant countries, certain gatherings, certain popular rejoicings, 
which have no apparent causes, and which originated in 
Catholic usages absolutely forgotten. Festivals of this 
kind have, in themselves, nothing moral, nothing respect¬ 
able : no matter ; they belong, though very remotely, to 
religious ideas : this is enough for perpetuating them. 
Three centuries have passed, and still they are not 
neglected. 

“ But attempt, 0 you lords of earth ! Princes, Kings, 
Emperors, powerful Majesties, invincible Conqueiors ! 
attempt, I say, only to bring the people, on some particu¬ 
lar day of each year, to an appointed place, for a dance. 
I ask very little of you, but I dare gravely defy you to 
succeed in it, w hilst the humblest missionary will attain to it, 
and make himself obeyed two thousand years after his death. 


133 


him, has man believed himself endowed with 
power to create , whilst he does not so much as 
possess that of giving names. He has 
believed,—he who has not the power of pro¬ 
ducing a single insect or a sprig of moss,“that 
he was the immediate author of Sovereignty, 
the most important, the most sacred, the most 
fundamental thing in the moral and political 
world ; # and that such a family, for example, 

Each year, in the name Saint John, of Saint Martin, Saint 
Benedict, etc. the people meet around a rustic temple : 
they come, animated with boisterous yet innocent mirth. 
Religion sanctifies the joy, and the joy embellishes 
religion : they forget their pains ; they think, on retiring 
from the spot, of the pleasure they will have, on the same 
day, the following year, and this day is, for them, a 
date.”— Considerations sur la France * 

Among the festivals , of the kind alluded to, by our 
Author in the above note, the Eton Montent may be men¬ 
tioned, to which, of late, great interest is attached, on 
account of the recent attempt, on the part of authority, to 
suppress it. We will venture to express the hope, that 
Eton scholars, young lords and old, gentlemen and all, 
will never be deprived of their salt. —Trans.] 

* The principle , that all legitimate power springs from 
the people , is noble and specious in itself , yet is belied by 


134 


reigns, because such a people wills it ; while 
there are numerous and incontestable proofs, 
that every sovereign family reigns because it is 
chosen by a superior power. If he does not 
see these proofs, it is because he shuts his 
eyes, or looks too closely. He has believed, 
that it was himself who invented languages ; 
while, again, it belongs to him only to see that 
every human language is learned and never in¬ 
vented, and that no imaginable hypothesis, 
within the circle of human power, can explain, 

all history and experience. Hume’s Hist, of Eng. Char¬ 
les I, chap. Lix, vol. VII, p. 131 : Dove’s Edit., London, 
1822. 

[“ The idea of Sovereignty in the people, of the natural 
equality of mankind, only proves how ignorant legislators 
are of the real character of mankind, and how little they 
are aware of their inherent depravity.”—“Dumont, the 
principal composer of the * Rights of Man ,’ at a later 
period, justly asked,—* are men all equal ? where is the 
equality ? Is it in virtue, talents, fortune, industry, situa¬ 
tion ? So far from it, they are born in a state of complete 
dependence on others, from which they are long being 
emancipated,’ ” Alison’s Hist, of French Revolution, vol. 
I, chap. hi.—T rans.] 


135 


with the least appearance of probability, either 
the formation or the diversity of languages. 
He has believed that he could constitute 
nations ; that is to say, in other terms, that he 
could create that national unity , by virtue of 
which one nation is not another. Finally, he 
has believed that, since he had the power of 
creating institutions, he had, with greater 
reason, that of borrowing them from other 
nations, and transferring them to his own coun¬ 
try, all complete to his hand, with the name 
which they bore among the people from whom 
they were taken, in order, like those people, 
to enjoy them with the same advantages. The 
French papers have furnished me with a singu¬ 
lar example on this point. 

XLVIII. Some years ago, the French 
people took it into their heads to establish, at 
Paris, certain courses, which Were gravely 
called, in some writings of the day, Olympic 


136 


Games. The reasoning of those who invent¬ 
ed or revived this beautiful name, was not 
complicated. Men raced, they said, on foot and 
on horse , by the banks of the Alpheus ; and 
they race on foot and on horse , by the banks of 
the Seine : then it is the same thing. Noth¬ 
ing can be more simple ; but, without asking 
them why they did not call these games 
Parisian , instead of Olympic , I shall proceed 
to make other observations. In order to insti¬ 
tute Olympic games, the Oracles were consult¬ 
ed*: gods and heroes participated in them ; 
they were never commenced without the offer¬ 
ing of sacrifices, and the performance of other 
religious ceremonies ; they were regarded as 
the great Comitia of Greece, and nothing was 
more august. But did the Parisians, before 
establishing their courses revived from the 
Greeks , go to Rome ad limina apostolorum , to 
consult the Pope ? Before jumping the break¬ 
neck, for the amusement of tradesmen, did 


137 


they celebrate High-Mass ? With what great 
political considerations did they associate these 
courses ? What were the names of the Insti- 
tutors ?—But enough : the most ordinary 
common sense feels instantly the nothing¬ 
ness, and even the ridiculousness, of this 
imitation. 

XLIX. Yet, in a Journal conducted by 
men of intelligence, whose only fault or mis¬ 
fortune was in professing modern doctrines, 
somebody wrote, a few years since, on the 
subject of these courses, the following passage, 
dictated by the most amusing enthusiasm : 

I predict it: the Olympic games of the 
French will one day attract all Europe to the 
Champ-de-Mars. What frigid souls have 
those , and little susceptible of emotion , who see 
here only the course ! For myself \ I behold a 
pageant , such as the world has never witnessed 
since those of Elis , where Greece was a spec¬ 


ie 


138 


tacle to Greece, No, the Roman circus , the 
tournaments of our ancient chivalry , did not 
approach it* 

And for myself, I believe , indeed, I know , 
that no human institution can endure, if it has 
not a religious basis, and , besides , (I entreat 
the most undivided attention to this,) if it bears 
not a name taken from the national language , 
originating itself without^any anterior and 
public deliberation, f 


* Décade Philosophique, Octobre 1797, No. I, p. 31. 
(1809.) This passage, brought near by its dates, has the 
double merit of being eminently amusing, and suggestive 
of thought. We see in it, with what ideas these children 
amused themselves at that time, and what they knew of that 
which man ought to know before all. Since that time, a 
new order of things has sufficiently refuted these fine 
conceits ; and if all Europe is at this day attracted to 
Paris , it certainly is not to see there the Olympic games. 
(1814.) 

t [We should be glad to know what the Author would 
say to the objection to this doctrine suggested by the names 
of Alexandria , Constantinople , St. Petersburgh , and 
Washington. —Trans. ] 


139 


L. The theory of names is still an object of 
great importance. Names are in no wise arbi¬ 
trary, as so many men have affirmed, who had 
lost their names. God calls Himself, I am ; and 
every creature calls itself, I am that. The 
name of a spiritual being is necessarily rela¬ 
tive to its action, which is its distinctive 
quality ; hence it happens, that among the 
Ancients, the highest honour for a Divinity, 
was polyonomy , that is to say, having a plural¬ 
ity of names , indicative of that of functions or 
extent of power. Ancient Mythology exhibits 
to us Diana, while an infant, asking this power 
from Jupiter ; and in the verses attributed to 
Orpheus, she is greeted under the name of 
Démon polyonyme (Genius of many names).* 


* See note on the seven verses of the hymn of Diana, by 
Callimachus, (Edit, of Spanheim ;) and Lanzi’s Saggio di 
letteratura etrusca , etc., in-8o, tom. II, p. 241, note. The 
hymns of Homer are in reality only a collection of epithets; 
which belong to the same principle of polyonomy. 


140 


This is substantially the same as to say, that 
God alone has the right of conferring a name. 
Indeed, He has named all things, since He has 
created all things. He has given names to the 
stars,* and to spirits, and of these last names, 
Holy Scripture utters only three of them, but 
these three names are all relative to the desti¬ 
nation of these ministers. It is the same with 
men, whom God himself has thought proper to 
name, and whom Holy Scripture has made us 
acquainted with, in a sufficiently great num¬ 
ber: the name always relates to the function.! 
Has He not said, that in His future kingdom, 
He would give to them who overcome, a new 
name,! expressive of their exploits ? and have 
men, made in the image of God , discovered a 


* Isaias, XL, 26. 

t Let us remember the greatest name divinely and directly 
given to man. The reason of the name was given, in this 
case, with the name ; and the name expresses precisely the 
destination, or what amounts to the same thing, the power. 
t Apoc. Ill, 12. 


141 


more impressive mode of rewarding conquer¬ 
ors, than that of conferring upon them a new 
name , the most honourable of all, in the judg¬ 
ment of men, that of the nations vanquished ? # 
As often as man is reputed to have altered his 
course of life, and received a new character, he 
very commonly receives a new name. This 
is seen in Baptism, in Confirmation, in the 
enlistment of soldiers, on entering a religious 
Order, at the manumission of slaves, etc.; in a 
word, the name of every being expresses what 
it is, and in this matter there is nothing 
arbitrary. The common expression, he has a 
name , he has no name, is very just and very 
significant ; no man being able to be ranked 
among those called to assemblies , and who have 

* This observation has been made by the anonymous, 
but well known, author of the German book, entitled, 
Die Siegsgeschichte der Christlichen Religion , in einer 
gemeinnützigen Erklarung der Offenbarung Johannis, 
in-8o. Nuremberg, 1799, p. 89. There is nothing to be 
said against this page. 


142 


a name* unless his family is marked by a sign 
which distinguishes it from others. 

LI. It is with nations as with individuals ; 
there are some which have no name. Herod¬ 
otus observes, that the Thracians would be the 
most powerful people in the world, if they 
were united : but , he adds, this union is im¬ 
possible , for they all have a different name.’f 
It is an excellent observation. There are also 
some modern people, who have no name , and 
there are others, who have many ; but poly- 
onomy is as unfortunate for nations, as it has 
been thought honourable for the genii. 

LII. Names having then nothing arbitrary, 
and originating, like all other things, more 
or less immediately in God, it must not be 
believed that man has the right of naming, 

* Num. XVI, 2. 
t Herod. Terpsic. V, 3. 


143 


without restriction, even those things of which 
he has some right to regard himself as the 
author, and of imposing on them names ac¬ 
cording to the idea which he forms of them. 
God has reserved to Himself, in this respect, a 
species of immediate jurisdiction which it is 
impossible to misunderstand.* O my dear 
Hermogenes ! the imposition of names is a 
great affair , which cannot belong to a bad 

man , nor even to an ordinary man . 

This right belongs only to a creator of names 
(onomat-urgos), that is to say , as it appears , to 
the lawgiver alone ; but the rarest of all 
human creatures is a lawgiver .f 

LIII. However, man loves nothing so 
much as to give names. He does this, for 
example, when he applies expressive epithets 

* Orig. Adv. Cels. I. 18, 24, p. 341, et in Exhort, ad. 
martyr., No. 46, et in not. edit. Rucei, in-fol., tom. I, p. 305, 
341. 

t Plato, in Crat. Opp., tom. Ill, p. 244. 



144 


to things, a talent for which the great writer is 
distinguished, especially the great poet. The 
happy application of an epithet dignifies a sub¬ 
stantive, which becomes illustrious under this 
new sign.* Examples may be found in every 
language ; hut, to confine myself to that of a 
people who have themselves so great a name, 
since they have given their own name to 
franchise , or rather franchise has received its 
name from them, what literary man is igno¬ 
rant of the greedy Acheron , the attentive 
coursers , the shameless bed , the timid sup¬ 
plications, the silvered trembling , the rapid 
destroyer , the pale flatterers , etc. ? f Man will 
never forget his primitive rights : it may be 


* “ So that, as Dionysius of Halicarnassus has observed, 
if the epithet is distinctive and natural , (olxtia xal 
7tQo(T(pvi]g,) it weighs in the discourse as much as a name.” 
(On the Poetry of Homer , chap. 6.) It may even be said, 
in a certain sense, that it is of more value, since it has the 
merit of creation, without having the fault of neologism. 

t I do not remember any illustrious'epithet from Voltaire, 
it is, perhaps, on my part, a pure defect of memory. 


145 


said, even, in a certain sense, that he will 
always exercise them ; but how much has 
his degradation curtailed them ! The fol¬ 
lowing law is as true as God who made it : 

Man is prohibited from giving great names 
to things of which he is the author , and which 
he thinks great ; but if he has proceeded legit¬ 
imately, the vulgar name of the thing will be 
rendered illustrious by it , and become great. 

LIY. The rule is the same, whether it 
concerns material or political creations. There 
is nothing better known in Greek history, for 
example, than the word Ceramicus : Athens 
possessed nothing more magnificent. A long 
time after she had lost her great men, and her 
political existence, Atticus being at Athens, 
wrote with a flourish to his illustrious, friend, 
finding myself the other day , in the Cera- 
micus , etc., and Cicero replied to him play¬ 
fully. * What however does this word, 

* [ While I was in my Tusculanum .] This is in return 


146 


so celebrated, signify ? Tuilerie [tile-kiln\* 
There is nothing more vulgar ; but the ashes 
of heroes, mingled with the earth, have con¬ 
secrated it, and the earth has consecrated the 
name. It is singular enough, that, at so great 
a distance of times and places, this same word 
Tuileries, famous, formerly, as the name of 
a place of burial, has been dignified anew, 
under the name of a palace. The power 
which came to inhabit the Tuileries , did not 
undertake to give to them some imposing 
name which might have a certain proportion 
to itself. If it had committed this fault, there 
was no reason that, the following day, this 
place should not have been inhabited by 
pick-pockets and courtesans. 

LV. One other reason which has its value, 
though it be drawn from a lower source, 

for that of yours ,—While I was in the Ceramicus, etc. 
Cic. ad Att. I, 10. 

* With a certain latitude which still includes the idea of 
Pottery. 


147 


should also induce us to distrust every pomp¬ 
ous name imposed à priori. It is, that the 
conscience of man, almost always admonish¬ 
ing him of the imperfection of the work 
which he has just produced, his revolted pride, 
which cannot itself be mistaken, seeks at least 
to deceive others, by inventing an honourable 
name which supposes precisely the contrary 
merit ; so that this name, instead of really 
attesting the excellence of the work, is a clear 
acknowledgement of the vice which charac¬ 
terizes it. The eighteenth century, so rich 
in every thing which can be imagined as 
false and ridiculous, has furnished a multitude 
of curious examples on this point, in the 
titles of books, epigraphs, inscriptions, and 
other things of this sort. Thus, for example, 
if you read at the head of one of the princi¬ 
pal works of this age, 


Tantum series juncturaque pollet : 
Tantum de medio sumptis accedit honoris ; 


148 


efface the presumptuous epigraph, and boldly 
substitute, before having even opened the 
book, and without the least fear of doing 
injustice, 

Rudis indigestaque moles ; 

Non bene junctarum discordia semina rerum. 

Indeed, chaos is the image of this book, and 
the epigraph eminently expresses what is, in 
the highest degree, wanting in the work. If 
you read at the head of another book, Histoire 
Philosophique et Politique , you may know, 
before having read the history announced 
under this title, that it is neither philosophical 
nor political; and you will know, besides, 
after having read it, that it is the work of a 
phrenetic. Does any man dare to write under 
his own portrait, Vitam impendere vero ?* do 

♦[This was the motto of J. J. Rousseau. It was inscribed 
on his tomb, as well as under his portrait. On the monu¬ 
ment erected to his memory by the Marquis de Girardin, in 
a grove of poplars, in his beautiful gardens at Ermenon- 


149 


not hesitate to lay a wager, without informa¬ 
tion, that it is the portrait of a liar, and he 
himself will avow it to you some day, when 
he may. take a fancy to speak the truth. Can 
any one read under another portrait, Postge- 
nitis hie earns erit, nunc cams amicis , without 
recollecting immediately that verse so happily 
borrowed from the original itself, to represent 
him in a manner a little different, I had ador¬ 
ers, but not one friend ? And indeed, there 
never perhaps existed a man, in the literary 
class, less fitted to feel friendship, and less 
worthy of inspiring it. Works and enter¬ 
prises of another kind afford matter for the 
same observation. Thus, for example, if 

ville, about ten leagues from Paris, the traveller reads the 
following inscription : 

■ Ici repose 

L'Homme de la JVature 
Es de la Vérité! 

Vitam impendere Vero. 

Hic jacent Ossa J. J. Rousseau .— Trans.] 


150 




music, among a celebrated nation, all at 
once, becomes an affair of state ; if the 
spirit of the age, blind on all points, bestows 
upon this art a false importance and a false 
protection, very different from what it needs ; 
if, in fine, a temple is erected to music under 
the antique and high sounding name of Ode on ; 
it is an infallible proof, that the art is on the 
decline ,* and no one ought to be surprised at 
hearing, in that country, a celebrated critic 
avow, soon after, in a style sufficiently vigor¬ 
ous, that nothing prevents one from writing on 
the pediment of the temple, A Room to let.* 


* “ The same pieces, executed at the Odeon , are far from 
producing in me the same sensation which I experienced at 
the old Théâtre de Musique , where I heard them with 
transport. Our artists have lost the tradition of this mas¬ 
ter-piece (the Stabat of Pergolèse) ; it is written for them 
in a foreign language ; they say its notes, without compre¬ 
hending its spirit ; their execution is cold, void of soul, of 
sentiment, and of expression. The Orchestra itself plays 
mechanically, and with a feebleness which destroys the 
effect.Ancient music (which?) is the rival of 



151 


LYI. But, as I have said, all this is only an 
observation of the second order ; let us return 
to the general principle, that man has not , or 
has no longer , the right of naming things (at 
least in the times referred to). Let one give 
great attention to this, that the most venera¬ 
ble names, in all languages, have a vulgar 
origin. The name never bears any proportion 
to the thing ; the thing always dignifies the 
name. It is necessary that the name germi¬ 
nate , so to speak ; otherwise the name is false. 
What does the word throne signify, in its 
origin ? seat or even stool. What does scep¬ 
tre signify? a staff to lean upon.* But the 

the highest poetry ; ours is only the rival of the warbling 

of birds. Let modern virtuosos cease then.from 

dishonouring sublime compositions.; let them play 

no more (especially) à Pergolèse ; it is too hard for 
them.”—Journ. de l’Empire, 28 mars 1812. 

* In the second book of the Iliad, Ulysses desires to 
prevent the Greeks from basely renouncing their enterprise. 
If he meets, in the midst of tumult excited by malcontents, 
a king or a noble, he addresses him in mild words to per- 




152 


staff of Kings was soon distinguished from 
all others, and this name under its new signifi- 

suade him ; but if he finds under his hand a man of the people, 
(Shilov ard(ju) (a remarkable gallicism,) he bangs him with 
heavy blows of the sceptre. —Iliad. II, 198, 199. 

It was formerly considered a crime in Socrates, to have 
made himself master of the verses which Ulysses pronounc¬ 
ed on this occasion, and for having cited them in order to 
prove to the people, that they knew nothing, and that 
they were nothing.— Xenophon, Memor. Socr. I. II, jJO. 

[“Each Prince of name, or chief in arms approv’d. 

He fir’d with Praise, or with persuasion mov’d :— 

* Warriors like you, with thought and wisdom blest. 

By brave examples should confirm the rest : ’ 

“ But if a clam’rous vile plebeian rose, 

Him with reproof he check’d, or tam’d with blows : 

* Be still, thou slave ! and to thy betters yield ; 

Unknown alike, in Council and in Field !’ ”— Pope. 

“ These words, it was alleged, Socrates would explain in 
such a manner, as if the Poet hereby meant to recommend 
roughness, severity, and stripes, as the only proper argu¬ 
ments to be made use of against the vulgar and the 
indigent. But Socrates was not absurd enough to 
draw such conclusions ;—for how then could he have 
complained, if he himself had been rudely treated ? But 
he asserted, and might strengthen his assertion with 
these lines from Homer, « that such as could neither counsel 
nor execute, —equally unfit, whether for the city, or the 


153 


cation, has subsisted for three thousand years. 
What is there more illustrious in literature, 
and more humble in its origin, than the word 
tragedy ? and the almost odious name of 
drapeau , raised and ennobled by the lance of 
warriors, what fortune has it not had in our 
language ? A multitude of other names might 
be mentioned, confirming more or less the 
same principle, such as these, for example, 
Senate , Dictator , Consul, Emperor , Church , 
Cardinal , Marshall , etc. We will conclude 
with those of Constable and Chancellor , appli¬ 
ed to two eminent dignities of modern times : 

camp these, and such as these,—and more especially 
when insolent and unruly,—ought to be reduced to reason, 
without any regard to the extent of their possessions.’ ” 
—Xenophon, Memor. Soc. I. II, 20.—Trans.] 

Pindar can also be cited for the history of the sceptre, 
in the place where he relates to us the anecdote of the 
ancient King of Rhodes, who killed his brother-in-law on 
the spot, by striking him, in a moment of vivacity and 
without malice, with a sceptre which was found unfor¬ 
tunately to have been made of too hard wood. —Olymp. 
VII. v. 49—55. A fine lesson for making sceptres lighter ! 

II 


154 


the first signifies, in its origin, merely the 
master of the stable ,* and the second, the 
man who stands behind a railing (that he 
might not be overwhelmed by the multitude 
of suppliants).f 

LVII. There are then two infallible rules 
for judging all human creations, of whatever 

* Constable is only a gallic contraction of Comes 
stabuli ; the companion , or the minister of the prince 
for the department of the stables. 

t [C tncelli is a term which was applied to the rails or 
balusters, in the ancient Basilicas, that enclosed all persons 
who participated in the honours of the tribunal, or in the 
duties of judgement, and which served to guard them 
from the intrusion of the inferior orders, who occupied the 
aisles and hall. Hence the word cancellarius or chancel¬ 
lor, who was at first only a chief notary under the Empe¬ 
rors, and was so called, because he sat behind the cancel - 
lus , or lattice, to avoid being crowded by the people. The 
term chancel has the same origin, and is applied to the 
portion of the Church enclosed by the cancelli. The 
Germans give the name of Kanzell to the pulpit standing 
on the cancelli , and all the languages of Europe give the 
title of Chancellor, or Cancellarius, to the successor of 
the officer who stood within the cancelli. For much inter¬ 
esting matter relating to the ancient Roman Basilicas, and 


155 


kind they may be, the basis and the name; 
and these two rules well understood, relieve 
all odious application. If the basis is purely 
human, the edifice cannot stand; and the 
more men there shall be, who engage in it, the 
more deliberation, learning, and writing espe¬ 
cially, they shall have employed about it, in 
fine, the more human means, of every kind, 
the more frail will the institution be. It is 
principally by this rule, that we must judge of 
whatever has been attempted by sovereigns 
or assemblies of men, for the civilization, 
institution or regeneration of nations. 

LVIII. On the contrary, the more divine 
the institution is in its basis, the more durable 
it will be. It is well even to observe, for 
greater clearness, that the religious principle is, 


\ 


their internal adaptation for the purposes of Christian wor¬ 
ship, see Article III, of London Quarterly Review for 
March, 1845.—Trans.] 


156 


in its own essence, creative and conservative 
in two ways. In the first place, as it acts with 
greater power than any other principle upon 
the human mind, it draws from it prodigious 
efforts. Thus, for example, if a man be per¬ 
suaded by his religious dogmas, that it is of 
great advantage for him, that after his death 
his body be preserved in all possible integrity, 
safe from the approach of any inconsiderate or 
profane hand ; this man, I say, after having 
exhausted the art of embalming, will finish by 
constructing the Egyptian Pyramids. In the 
second place, the religious principle already so 
strong by what it does, is again infinitely more 
so by what it prevents, in consequence of the 
veneration with which it invests every thing 
which it takes under its protection. If a 
simple pebble is consecrated, there is all at 
once a reason for its escaping from hands 
which might pervert or desecrate it. The 
earth is covered with proofs of this truth. 


157 


The Etruscan vases, for example, preserved by 
the religion of tombs, have come down to us, 
notwithstanding their fragility, in greater 
numbers, than the monuments of marble and 
of bronze of the same epoch * Would you 
then preserve every thing, dedicate every thing. 

LIX. The second rule, that of names, is 
not, I think, less clear, nor less decisive, than 
the first. If the name is imposed by an 
assembly ; if it is established by previous de¬ 
liberation, so that it precedes the thing ; if the 
name is pompous ; f if it has a grammatical 
proportion to the object which it is to repre¬ 
sent ; in fine, if it is taken from a foreign 
language, especially an ancient language ; all 

* Mercure de France, 17 juin 1809, No. 413, page 679. 

t Thus, for example, if a man, other than a sovereign, 
should call himself legislator , it is a certain proof that he 
is not one ; and if an assembly should venture to call itself 
legislative , not only is it a proof that it is not so, but it is 
a proof that it has lost its wits, and that, in a little while, 
it will be abandoned to the scorn of the universe. 


158 


the characteristics of nullity are found united, 
and we may he sure that the name and the 
thing will disappear in a very little while. 
The contrary suppositions reveal the legiti¬ 
macy, and consequently, the permanancy of 
the institution. We must take good heed 
not to pass over this subject lightly. A true 
philosopher should never lose sight of language, 
the true barometer, whose variations announce 
infallibly good and bad times. To confine my¬ 
self to the subject which I am now treating, it 
is certain that the unlimited introduction of 
foreign words, applied especially to national 
institutions of every kind, is one of the most 
infallible signs of the moral degradation of a 
people. 

LX. If the formation of all empires, the 
progress of civilization, and the unanimous 
agreement of all history and tradition do not 
suffice still to convince us, the death of empires 
will complete the demonstration commenced 


159 


by their birth. As it is the religious princi¬ 
ple which has created every thing, so it 
is the absence of this same principle which 
has destroyed every thing. The sect of 
Epicurus, which might be called ancient 
incredulity , corrupted at first, and soon after 
destroyed every government which was so 
unfortunate as to give it admission. Every 
where Lucretius announced Cesar. 

But all past experience disappears before the 
frightful example afforded by the last century. 
Still intoxicated with its fumes, men are very 
far from being, at least in general, sufficiently 
composed to contemplate this example in its 
true light, and especially to draw from it the 
necessary conclusions. It is then very im¬ 
portant to direct our whole atttention to this 
terrible scene. 

LXI. There have always been some 
forms of religion in the world, and there have 


160 


been wicked men who have opposed them: 
impiety also has always been regarded as a 
crime ; for, as there cannot be a false religion 
without some mixture of the true, so there 
cannot be any impiety which does not oppose 
some divine truth more or less disfigured ; but 
real impiety can only exist in the bosom of the 
true religion ; and, by a necessary consequence, 
impiety has never produced in past times, the 
evils which it has committed in our day ; for 
its guilt is always in proportion to the light by 
which it is surrounded. It is by this rule that 
we must judge the eighteenth century ; for it 
is under this point of view that it is unlike 
every other. We commonly hear it said, that 
all ages resemble each other , and that men are 
ever the same ; but we must be careful not to 
believe in these general maxims which indo¬ 
lence or levity have invented to save them¬ 
selves the trouble of reflection. All ages, 
on the contrary, and all nations, manifest a 


161 


peculiar and distinctive character which must 
be attentively considered. Undoubtedly vice 
has always existed in the world ; but it may 
differ in quantity, in nature, in its ruling quali¬ 
ty and in intensity.* Now, though impious 
men have always existed, there never was, 
before the eighteenth century, in the heart of 
Christianity, an insurrection against God; 
never especially had there been seen, before 
this, a sacrilegious conspiracy of all the facul¬ 
ties against their Author : now, this has been 
witnessed in our day. The vaudeville has blas¬ 
phemed as well as the tragedy, and romance 
as well # as history and natural philosophy. 
Men of this age have prostituted genius to 
irréligion, and according to the admirable 


* It is necessary also to have regard to the mixture of 
virtues, the proportion of which vary infinitely. When one 
has pointed out the same kind of excesses at different 
times and places, he thinks himself entitled to conclude 
magisterially that men have always been the same. There 
is no sophism more gross or more common. 


162 


expression of the dying St. Louis, they have 

WAGED WAR AGAINST GOD WITH HlS GIFTS.* 

Ancient impiety never gives itself trouble ; 
sometimes it reasons ; ordinarily it jests, but 
always without asperity. Lucretius even 
never comes to insult ; and though his sombre 
and melancholic temperament might lead him 
to look upon the dark side of things, even 
when he accuses religion of having produced 
great evils, he does it with perfect sang-froid. 
The ancient religions were not considered 
of sufficient importance for contemporaneous 
incredulity to quarrel with them. 

LXII. When the good tidings were first 
published to the world, the attack became 
more violent : nevertheless its enemies always 
observed a certain moderation. They showed 
themselves in history only at great intervals, 

* Joinville, dans la collection des Mémoires relatifs à 
l’Histoire de France, In-8o, tom. II, p. 160. 


163 


and constantly isolated. There never was a 
union or formal league among them ; they 
never abandoned themselves to the rage of 
which we have been witnesses. Bayle even, 
the father of modern incredulity, was wholly 
unlike his successors. In his most censur¬ 
able deviations, we do not find in him any 
great desire for proselyting, still less the 
tone of irritation or the spirit of party : he 
denies less than he doubts ; he speaks on both 
sides ; oftentimes he is more eloquent for the 
good cause than the bad. # 

LXIII. It was then only in the first part 
of the eighteenth century, that impiety became 
really a power. We see it at first extending 
itself on every side with inconceivable activity. 
From the palace to the cabin, it insinuates 
itself every where, and infests every thing ; 

* See, for example, with what power of logic he has 
combatted materialism in the article Leucippe of his 
Dictionary. 


164 


it has invisible ways, a concealed but in¬ 
fallible action, so that the most attentive 
observer, witness of the effect, is not al¬ 
ways able to discover the means. By an 
inconceivable delusion, it gains the affec¬ 
tions of those even of whom it is the most 
mortal enemy ; and the authority which it is 
on the point of immolating, thoughtlessly 
embraces it before receiving the blow. Soon 
a simple system becomes a formal association, 
which, by a rapid gradation, changes into a 
confederacy, and at length into a grand con¬ 
spiracy which covers Europe. 

LXIV. Then that character of impiety 
which belongs only to the eighteenth century, 
manifests itself for the first time. It is no 
longer the cold tone of indifference, or at most 
the jnalignant irony of scepticism ; it is a 
mortal hatred; it is the tone of anger, and 
often of rage. The writers of that period, at 
least the most distinguished of them, no 


165 


longer treat Christianity as an immaterial 
human error ; they pursue it as a capital 
enemy ; they oppose it to the last extreme ; it 
is a war to the death : and, what would seem 
incredible, if we had not sad proofs of it 
before our eyes, is, that many of those men, 
who call themselves philosophers , advanced 
from hatred of Christianity to personal hatred 
of its Divine Author. They hated Him as 
really as one hates a living enemy. Two 
men especially, who will forever he covered 
with anathemas by posterity, distinguished 
themselves by this form of flagitiousness 
which would appear to be above the power 
of the most depraved human nature.* 

* [ D'Alembert and Voltaire distinguished themselves in 
this particular, and are, very probably, the persons alluded 
to in the text. “ This frightful stroke of force is not necessary 
in order to render the greatest constitutive efforts useless: 
forgetfulness of the great Being (I do not say contempt) is 
an irrevocable anathema on human works, which are 
blasted by it. All imaginable institutions repose on a 


166 


LX?. However entire Europe having been 
civilized by Christianity, and its ministers 


religious idea, or they quickly pass away. They are strong 
and durable in proportion as they are divinisées , if I may 
so express myself. Not only human reasons, or what one 
calls philosophy , without knowing what is said, cannot 
supply those bases, that are called superstitious, always 
without knowing what one says ; but philosophy is, on the 
contrary, essentially a disorganizing power. In a word 
man cannot reflect the Creator except in placing himself in 
near relation with Him. Senseless as we are, if we would 
reflect the image of the sun with a mirror, do we turn it 
towards the earth ? 

“These reflections are addressed to all the world, to the 
believer as well as to the sceptic : it is a fact which I 
advance, and not a thesis. Let one laugh at religious 
ideas, or venerate them, no matter ; they form not the less, 
true or false, the only true basis of all durable institutions. 

“ Rousseau, the man perhaps who is most deceived, has, 
nevertheless, happily hit upon this observation, without 
having wished to draw the conclusions from it. 

“ The Jewish law , says he, ever subsisting ; that of the 
child of Ismael , which ruled half the world for ten centuries ; 
proclaim still at this day the great men who dictated them. 
.... Proud philosophy , or the blind spirit of party, sees in 
them only fortunate impostors. 

“It remained with him to draw the proper conclusion, in¬ 
stead of descanting to us of this great and powerful genius 
who presides over durable establishments: as if this poetry 
explained anything ! ”— Considérations sur la France .] 


167 


having obtained high political consideration in 
every country, the civil and religious institu¬ 
tions were blended, and, as it were, amalgama¬ 
ted in a surprising manner ; so that it might 
be said of all the states in Europe, with more 
or less of truth, what Gibbon has said of 
France, that this kingdom was made by the 
Bishops .* It was then inevitable that the 

* [The following passage, from another work of our 
Author, illustrates and limits the sentiment of the text. 
—“A peculiar feature of this monarchy is, that it pos¬ 
sesses a certain theocratic element which particularly 
belongs to it, and which has given it fourteen hundred 
years of duration : there is nothing so national as this ele¬ 
ment. The Bishops, successors of the Druids in this 
respect, have only aimed to perfect it. 

“I do not believe that any other European monarchy, 
has employed, for the good of the state, a greater number 
of Pontiffs in the civil government. I go back in thought 
from the pacific Fleury to those St. Ouens, those St. Lcgers, 
and so many others distinguished in the night of their age, 
—true Orpheuses of France, who tamed tigers and made 
the oaks to follow them. I doubt if a similar series can be 
shown elsewhere. 

“But w r hilst thé priesthood was in France one of the 
three columns which sustained the throne, and played in 


168 

philosophy of the age should unhesitatingly 
hate the social institutions, from which it was 


the assemblies of the nation, in the tribunals, in the min¬ 
istry, in the embassies a part so important, one cannot 
perceive, or if at all very slightly, its influence in the civil 
administration ; and at the time even that a priest was 
Prime Minister, there was not in France a government of 
priests. 

“ All the powers were well balanced, and every one was 
at his post. It is, in this point of view, that England resem¬ 
bles France the most. If she ever banishes from her 
political language these words, Church and State, her 
government will perish like that of her rival.”— Considéra¬ 
tions sur la France. 

A striking passage from Alison, in reference to France, 
at the time when the ascendency of the priesthood referred 
to by our Author was suppressed, may be cited in this 
connection. 

“The Prelates sounded the alarm in the strongest terms 
on this portentous state of things. The torrent of irreli¬ 
gious opinions with which France had lately been deluged, 
had awakened a general belief amongst the reflecting part 
of the community that some terrible national catastrophe 
was at hand. The ex-Jesuit Beau Regard, when preaching 
before the court in Lent, pronounced with an emphatic 
voice these remarkable words, which subsequent events ren¬ 
dered prophetic:—‘Yes! thy temples, 0 Lord, shall be 
destroyed ; thy worship abolished ; thy name blasphemed. 
But what do I hear, great God ! To the holy strains which 


169 


impossible to separate the religious principle. 
This has taken place : every government, and 
all the establishments of Europe, were offen¬ 
sive to it, because they were Christian ; and 
in proportion as they were Christian, an 
inquietude of opinion, an universal dissatisfac¬ 
tion, seized all minds. In France, especially, 
the philosophic rage knew no bounds; soon 
a single formidable voice, forming itself from 
many voices united, is heard to cry, in the 
midst of guilty Europe, 

LXYI. “ Depart from us ! # Shall we then 


beneath sacred roofs arose in Thy praise, shall succeed 
profane and licentious songs : the infamous rites of Venus 
shall usurp the place of the worship of the Most High ; and 
she herself sit on the throne of the Holy of Holies, to re¬ 
ceive the incense of her new adorers.’—( Lacretelle , vu., 
11.) Who could have imagined, that this was literally to 
be accomplished, in four years, within the Cathedral walls 
of Notre-Dame ?”—Alison’s Hist, of French Revolution. 
Voi. I. chap. iv.—Trans.] 

* Dixerunt Deo; Recede a nobis ! Scientiam viarum 
tuarum, nolumus. Job XXI, 14. 

12 


170 


forever tremble before the priests, and receive 
from them such instruction as it pleases them 
to give us ? Truth, throughout Europe, 
is concealed by the fumes of the censer ; it is 
high time that she come out of this noxious 
cloud. We shall speak no more of Thee to 
our children ; it is for them to know, when 
they shall arrive at manhood, whether there 
is such a Being as Thyself, and what Thou 
art, and what Thou requirest of them. Every 
thing which now exists, displeases us, because 
Thy name is written upon every thing that 
exists. We wish to destroy all, and to recon¬ 
struct the whole without Thee. Leave our 
councils, leave our schools, leave our houses : 
we would act alone : Reason suffices for us. 
Depart from us ! ” 

How has God punished this execrable mad¬ 
ness ? He has punished it, as He created the 
light, by a single word. He spake, Let it be 
done !—and the political world has crumbled. 


171 


See, accordingly, how the two kinds of 
demonstration are united, to force conviction 
upon the least discerning. On the one hand, 
the religious principle presides at all political 
creations ; and on the other, every thing disap¬ 
pears, as soon as this is withdrawn. 

LXVII. Europe is guilty, for having closed 
her eyes against these great truths ; and it is 
because she is guilty, that she suffers. Yet 
she still repels the light, and acknowledges 
not the arm which gives the blow. Few 
men, indeed, among this material generation, 
are in a condition to know the date , nature , 
and enormity , of certain crimes, committed by 
individuals, by nations, and by sovereignties ; 
still less to comprehend the kind of expiation 
which these crimes demand, and the adorable 
prodigy which compels Evil to purify, with 
its own hands, the place which the eternal 
Architect has already measured by the eye for 


172 


His marvellous constructions. The men of 
this age have taken their side. They are 
sworn to set their eyes always bowing down to 
the earth .* But it would be useless, perhaps 
even dangerous, to go into further details : it 
is enjoined upon us to profess the truth in 
love. f It is necessary, besides, on certain 
occasions, to profess it only with respect ; and, 
notwithstanding every imaginable precaution, 
the step would be slippery, even for the most 
calm and best minded writer. The world, 
moreover, comprises always an innumerable 
multitude of men, so perverse, so profoundly 
corrupt, that if they should bring themselves 
to suspect the truth of certain things, their 
wickedness would be redoubled, and they 
would render themselves, so to speak, as 


*Oculos suos statuer unt decliimre in terram. —Ps. XVI, 11. 
t JXtjStvuvTtç h aryi7r*,.—Ephes. IV, 15. The expression 
cannot be translated. The Vulgate, loving better, with 
reason, to speak justly, than to speak Latin, has said, 
Facienles veritatem in charitate. 


173 


guilty as the rebel angels. Ah! rather than 
this, let their brutishness become greater still, 
if it be possible, to the end that they may 
not become as guilty as even men can be. 
Blindness is without doubt a terrible chastise¬ 
ment ; sometimes, however, we may see love 
in it : this is all that it can be useful to say 
at this time. 


F INIS. 


























# 
















* 
















, * * ^ ^ 
O/, C - 


V * 1 


V * ' " /* 

-«• 

• : ^ ^7 v 4 -, V 


«$»<<* 




^ 0 * 


^ v / *, s' A° <* "/ »*s' A° 

r 0 v * " * 0 ^ ^ 0 ° * " * 0 ' r°' * v 







%.(? 


”' ° ^ 

[> ^ ✓ ^M>W^ \ o i^ _ > 

V'~" ^ v 

*. % > r Wa\ ' ^, 



; f °^ 

'.V'\/ V"'* 

V * ' * o / ^ 

* ^„ V ^ 

*M4. ^ 





<fc, / ''7,- < ’\# 

* û ? / 'ifr V 

«- >9 % vi- .' 

J V ~ T •%. ' 

' ^ 



O -V 
c < 0 . J •* 

V % v * 0 /■ *%> 



b tfr 


s 

^ft> ., *v « O „ V 





v- ~ * •>•;• -'•<# * V 

K ^ * 0 / \> * ' * 0 , ^ 


! / -' S 

s* ,# ^ % 



, .. $ °*‘ 

v * v * ° a *% 

h°, *V : 9 

s ^ -- '■pi I y ° ,c- 

,. . „* ,<& % V ,# 

' * * s ' % A G < v v * * s ' ^0 ^ * i , * V ' A G 

rv * v 6 0 a <$. f 0 v «. v * o / <Cp • C 0 ^ * ' 

V * nfC V /hs 

^/.O x , - y ^: v Z 7 , ° *f 





cS - ^illf# - r ' c cS - 

/ ^ f / %■ % 
a t, 'i A^ / y * <i S s A G ^ 

5 b. ^ 


&v , C', O i::T '> 6 ^ 

A.^ A ^ A. r ‘ v ^ ^ ? 
















*_ 4 T 

«;/)/= AsY 

■rWy A y fxy- 



«°, '** & 
cS ** 

> ,^ s % V 



r ; "'X' * *- 


M 


jl O 

v<« 






71 




r O, ' ‘ ' S A '“O. -Q 

A '% V * Y * " /- % V * * * » , -/ 

V > ^ .^Va* 




cP 



. r f\^> 9/1 > *f> 

l $ :fëà * ^ 


,# ^ y^^np». ,.«$-■ 

-A& ^ ** , , S .y(S 

G 0 - *- Y *°, 



r> 


z 





v » , rv ^ • C v ;rr ' ' v<... v ' * 

• ' - ‘ ^ .«, . *• V % 


. 


9 /> \^ x « 


Efiflil! : h- ^ o _ ^ 

^ *’ '* ^ 
**' -<T»... % '** 


0 



* 5 - 0 * 


r °- 


L r ~ft> 



s s ^Cr >> /y , 

•O’ 'j - Y< ' 0 »- r -<> * * 

“• : ^ 


v.,Vf 

%°o'%, & 

YA y. </> V 




<t it 


- ^f. V ,- ’ « a ' . 0 ° » * 

« ■%. 0 < 

v . /°- 

'S’ » . *. A v » • - -, 

« rVWV^/^ _, ^ 

O cS 

''/9 * 9 / 9 '- T ^. . 

* ; V<* SéMâ\ V 0< : 




5 ^ 






N 


H o 






o' v # 1 ' 9 ^ '*■'* 

V * X * 0 /• ; ^ V-' * * 0 , ^ 




Y A 




,<9 -* 





. 0 ’ 



°, %- o' 















■'• toft" ;«,{♦#*♦ y'r*', rr?Jr 


•■•> p ,j 


V 'My? J 't Î 


*-'4-, +4 ■!4rV4 f* jifwt .-Off ;¥»4 


■ii-v.* }lf 11,-} h • f » fik*!rfwnPf 

ij»rl'Of[ iljv"^ Uv^if 

\t 4 .> \ > Mit «•♦*!>** frf 

• w <-j » î w< HH* Wffl'flW 

jfllfjw SUv.lï MiiVf» Ultw 

.!•. >\ H L ; .1 « 4 Ü 1 » 3 . i } rtffH 14-1 

'-t’l' it.l f M i -,<( V (/ |4 




4 rp 4 j ' 4 >f H * * jw 3 tyhwhv’b ’ 

-i ,-<•* • »'»>.* .>«* f/iJ ç44-*i* s r*] i fy iVrU 
44 f-l »># WHtM 


. ..ML . 

h) *ii »>i !r* H 'V* 

■ > 7 rV J O 45 •<iff- 

n firm f 4 W «JM# Hfti 1 

4 n <■» •* r}*r 

.-ia-U/vI 


fitly 


fMlj-f * 1 tiijAtymyw V J 

JAt) .v.-.yM.'Ku 

1 y *^ 4 'ti 





Æ 




STOJWfjSSj&i® 

f' tc*' '’ T’ 1 '.- ? 


*>! 




hp'IHjt rntri ' ' ’ ; 4' -1 
l> 4 j) « H? i ►- ».♦.(•/ 1 ■>■ 1 

pHnHt Jw^ft*** t *' 1 
un I •) *'J \-J - 1 ?. ■; ' 1 . 1 ». ■ 

..., .. 

,sj-u t >u ^ ‘Mfft 1 ; f h • 

IwH 'Mi flL'l Min i'^ 

; v î JWwik^r' i > ' iff ‘ *r ,i: ‘ 
Af-wiWWJhMI'riiw.VH'vJr* " 

*1 '■. 1*'., t. ,. If ij'\ •>< 

4 M.’ ^ -,4 rM 

Mt- JiMwjr ; b" 

] M \i' '-W . ft 1.1 i r 
«Hi! jiU’M hv 'if! I ■/>/** 
ijj ïiiïwf'mj v- 


V.Vrrw fotf wf 'I'Hwi 
o’?i?y'f v f r 1 rW'A'fr-^Y^ 


mmmm 

iidi <U*( > }i f . iS* » ' • 





a»*. »'*..• ■-■v.rf-. jnu\, 

r « >•*; • ' iT^'- «i f ipvf / 4 -*t 

I rV 4 * 14 '« >). »•» •' '- • .' 

'î .’'W ri-f* ** ' ’'■** ‘ 

*,*, V *J r* ’ ' •'*••' V •!»': ' 























































































































































































































































